Sound Factory Trial Begins

[web_norah]

This was in the paper today - http://www.nydailynews.com/news/cri...0p-264164c.html

Club's drugs ripped

The owner of the Sound Factory turned the Hell's Kitchen club into an "open-air drug market," a prosecutor said yesterday.
Owner Richard Grant once said to an underling, "The Sound Factory without drugs is like a bar without alcohol," said prosecutor Benjamin Lawsky during opening statements in Manhattan Federal Court.

Two Sound Factory patrons died after using ecstasy, and other overdose victims were treated in an area of the club that had been set up to avoid scrutiny from police, he said.

Lawsky said the area, a dirty, dark hallway, was known to some as "Crack Alley" and to others as "the ICU."

"This was not a few kids sneaking in a few pills," he said.

Grant, 62, and Sound Factory security boss Randell Rogiers are on trial for allegedly letting the Sound Factory be used as a drug "stash house."

The cavernous club closed after it was raided for drugs in March 2004.

Grant attorney Camille Abate said her client kicked out drug dealers. Customers "didn't come for the drugs, they came because Richard Grant put on shows like he was Cecil B. DeMille," Abate said.