By Blake Deshazo | The Selma Times-Journal

Travis Wright is one step closer to opening his bar on Water Avenue in Selma.

The Selma City Council approved his liquor license with the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Commission at a special called meeting last week.

“Everything is good on the liquor license part,” Wright said.

But Wright doesn’t want to have just an ordinary bar that serves alcohol. He wants his bar to be a hookah bar, which is something Selma hasn’t seen before.

“We’re going to be able to open but not with the hookahs,” Wright said. “We’re going to be a lounge with no hookahs for the time being until they pass an ordinance.”

A hookah is a water pipe used to smoke flavored tobacco, which has become more popular over the last few years.

“My lounge is different than the other lounges. With the hookah part of it I would be able to get a mixed culture in there,” Wright said. “We would be able to have a diverse community with the hookahs.”

Wright said he plans to go ahead and open as just a lounge that serves alcohol until the city can pass an ordinance giving him the green light on serving hookah to his customers.

“I’m not excited about it, but it is a way I can start making some money back,” Wright said. “The hookah experience is what I wanted. It was a new thing we were going to bring to Selma.”

Open Space Hookah Bar and Lounge will have a grand opening without the hookahs on Nov. 18.

The hookah part of the business brought up a red flag when it was originally brought to the city council.

Council President Corey Bowie said many members on the council were not quite sure what hookahs were and wanted to do more research into them before allowing the bar to open its doors.

“We always welcome entertainment,” Bowie said last month. “But with something of this new magnitude, what we want to do is study and look around and see what other cities are doing.”

The council proposed an ordinance that would allow Wright to have hookahs at his bar, but it has yet to be passed. The original ordinance would require Wright to earn 10 percent or more of its quarterly gross revenue from alcohol sales and 80 percent or more from the sale of shisha, which is the tobacco smoked in a hookah.

Wright said after he gets his feet wet in the first few months of running the normal bar side of things he will readdress the council about the hookahs.

“I’m going to try to do one step at a time with the city,” Wright said. “You can’t put too much on them at one time. I’ll probably wait until January or sometime.”