By Blake Deshazo | The Selma Times-Journal

Travis Wright’s dream of opening a lounge with a hookah bar in Selma has been put on hold while the city council does more research on it.

Wright’s lounge, Open Space Hookah Lounge and Bar, would be a first for Selma, but the city council and police department have concerns about it.

“I’m willing to work with the city,” Wright said. “I just don’t want them to classify me with a bad label without even knowing me.”

Selma City Council President Corey Bowie said the hookah side of the business is something many of the council members have never heard of before, so they want to do their due diligence in looking into how other cities have handled it before giving Wright the thumbs up. During Thursday night’s council work session, Wright said he would like to go ahead and open the lounge part of his business if the hookah bar has to come later.

Selma Police Chief John Brock has concerns about health and safety for people in Selma because of the tobacco product and crime related to other lounges in the city.

Wright said he is willing to go the extra mile to make sure Open Space is a safe place for people to enjoy by having extra security and encouraging a police presence outside.

“I’m doing all the extra that I need to,” Wright said. “I’m going to have metal detectors and wands. Any violators I’m going to turn them over to the police. I’m not going to just put them out of the club where they can be violent outside. I want to hand them over to the SPD.”

Brock also has concerns about illegal drugs being used in the hookahs, but Wright said that won’t be an issue.

“My staff will fill the hookahs up. The public has no way of putting any other contaminants inside of it,” Wright said. “Once the flavor is inside of the valve and I lock the top, no one else is allowed to have the capabilities to get inside of it.”

Wright has been fixing the bar up since June and has spent close to $30,000 on renovations.

“I’ve been in this business since June repairing it because they had a lot of issues in this building with the previous people,” Wright said. “It wasn’t up to city code, so I had to do some repairs.”

Wright said he understands hookahs are something new to Selma, but he wants to be able to open the regular bar up and put the hookah side of the business on hold until the city can pass an ordinance to regulate it.

“I understand that the city doesn’t have an ordinance for the hookahs, but they want to hold my place of business back because of the hookahs,” Wright said.

“I just want them to just let me open, and we can come back with the ordinance on the hookahs.”

Wright said he started working on the bar with the intent to give people in Selma somewhere new and safe downtown to visit instead of going out of town.

“I just wanted something that was more upscale,” Wright said. “I work all week and then on the weekend when I want to wind down I have to go to Prattville or Montgomery to enjoy myself. I’m trying to give this class of people a place to go.”

Wright said he has been trying to open his doors since the end of August and hopes the city finds a resolution sooner rather than later.