Bar owner calls last drinks

MARCH 9: Tweed Heads’ iBar owner Warren Armstrong is selling his controversial business and 24-hour liquor licence.

Blainey Woodham

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THE controversial owner of the iBar is selling up and moving out.

Former strip-club entrepreneur Warren Armstrong was yesterday looking for buyers interested in the $500,000 Tweed Heads business and accompanying 24-hour liquor licence because he was fed up with the Tweed Shire Council and local police.

He labelled them a “business prevention department” and said they went out of their way to make his business suffer.

“I’m sick and tired of the headaches it’s causing me,” Mr Armstrong said.

“Between the police and the council, they are a business prevention department.

“They made sure it would not succeed.

“They were going to keep going until they ran us out of town.”

Mr Armstrong first hit headlines in 2007 when he opened a topless Babes and Bubbles car wash in Brisbane.

He said as soon as he sold the iBar he planned to return to Brisbane.

“I’ve been staying down here and was looking at something more permanent, but that’s obviously not going to happen now,” he said.

The iBar, once promoted as Australia’s only adult restaurant for its lap dancers and lingerie waitresses, lost its unique appeal after bowing to public pressure last year.

The Wharf Street premises was initially approved by Tweed Shire Council to be used as a restaurant and bar in June 2005.

However, mounting pressure from council and the public eventually saw lap dances and the lingerie waitresses taken off the menu.

In November, the iBar branched out with a drive-through coffee cafe.

“We never moved here to cause controversy or to upset the people,” Mr Armstrong said.

“We changed our ways but we’re still getting just as many problems.

“If this was a different business it wouldn’t have been a problem.

“Someone is burning the midnight oil all night at council thinking up every way to make things difficult at the iBar.

“We’ve done everything they’ve asked us to do, but it’s just too much.”

Mr Armstrong said he did not see a similar business working in the shire.

He could not say for certain if he would open another restaurant and bar in the Tweed.

“It won’t be anything like this though,” he said.

Tweed Shire Council declined to comment when contacted by the Tweed Daily News.

Meanwhile Mr Armstrong’s son, iBar licensee Nigel Scott Armstrong, is facing three charges of permitting intoxication on the premises.

He appeared in Tweed Heads Local Court yesterday and pleaded not guilty.

The three charges relate to incidents at 5am on August 23, 4.35am on

September 5 and 12.30am on September 17 last year.

Scott Armstrong will appear in Tweed Heads Local Court again on July 14.