In September, there was a wedding at 1808 Adams Mill Road NW in Adams Morgan, in a beautiful old historic building occupied by the Stroga yoga studio. As weddings go, it was pretty loud, residents in the area say.

“The parking was gone for a long period of time, and they had security trying to block the sidewalk,” says Bryan Weaver, an advisory neighborhood commissioner whose district includes Stroga. “But people in the neighborhood said, ’Well, it’s a one-day production, it’s not that big of a deal.”

It became a much bigger deal a few weeks later, when it became clear that events at the Stroga building were becoming a regular thing. The wedding was the first in a series of special events at the building, and, eventually, thanks to a steady stream of nighttime events, the Stroga began to feel an awful lot like a nightclub.

“It’s a yoga studio, then, often, on Friday and Saturday nights, there are special events,” says Mindy Moretti, another advisory neighborhood commissioner. “They go on until 2, 3 in the morning; then, because it has to become a yoga studio again in the morning, everything that was brought in is loaded out until 4 or 5 in the morning. The owner has the right to rent it out for special events, but now it’s a weekly occurrence, sometimes several nights a week. The neighbors haven’t had a chance to weigh in, and we don’t want a nightclub on the back side of apartments. “

The most regular event is the Grey Goose Mansion, an exclusive temporary pop-up party, meant to promote the Grey Goose vodka brand. It started in September and is scheduled to end with a New Year’s Eve event. The party has become a runaway success, and, for many young black professionals, the Grey Goose parties are among the best in the city right now.

“I see 10 times as many people at Grey Goose Mansion as I do at, like, hot yoga,” says Weaver.

Weaver says once it became clear to neighbors that Grey Goose Mansion was a regular event, people became irritated. “It’s the same owner, the same caterer, the same promotions team every week,” he says.

Neighbors began looking into how it could be possible for the same crew to throw a shindig every week. It couldn’t be an actual bar or nightclub—there’s a liquor license moratorium in place in Adams Morgan. And it couldn’t be a special event, because it was happening every single week. As it turns out, despite its regularity, Grey Goose Mansion was indeed operating as a special event, with a caterer providing food and alcohol.

“The people renting it are using a catering license, but that’s not what a catering license is meant for,” says Moretti. “There’s a loophole in the catering law, and they dove headfirst into that loophole.”

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In D.C., even the opening of a restaurant (let alone a bar or nightclub) can be delayed for months on end while business owners attempt to negotiate things like hours, outdoor seating, and noise abatement with ANCs. Chef Jamie Leeds, of Hank’s Oyster Bar, has said that when seeking to open her Dupont Circle eatery, the process took so long that she eventually just signed a voluntary agreement, rather than continue negotiating with neighbors, just so she could open her business.

Grey Goose Mansion, on the other hand, has figured out how to make something that looks and feels a lot like a nightclub without the excruciatingly slow processes that involve wedging such a business into a residential neighborhood.

Eric Clay, an owner of Ibiza, and Adimu Colon, a former D.C.-area radio personality, promote and host Grey Goose Mansion. They rent the venue each week from Doug Jefferies, owner of the Stroga building. The Grey Goose Mansion is technically a special event, even though it goes on for several months rather than a single day. Food and alcohol are procured through Epicurean Experience Catering, in which Colon and Clay have a minority stake.

Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) rules regarding catering licenses state that licensees can sell, deliver, and serve alcoholic beverages at catered events at which they are also serving food—actual prepared food, not snack items such as chips or peanuts. The code also states that a licensee’s service of alcoholic beverages must be incidental to food.

Neighbors assumed this was an open-and-shut-violation—obviously the sale of alcohol isn’t incidental to food at Grey Goose Mansion. It’s Grey Goose Mansion. At a recent fact-finding hearing in front of the city’s Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) board, the caterer was asked to explain the percentage of food versus alcohol served at Grey Goose Mansion on any given week, and, not surprisingly, alcohol won out.

But taken literally, city regulations state that a caterer’s service of alcoholic beverages should be incidental to food—not one catered event, or even a series of them, but the caterer’s business as a whole. Andrew J. Kline, who represented Epicurean Caterers as well as Clay and Colon in front of the ABC board, argued this point, and the catering company provided documentation stating that, other than the Grey Goose Mansion event, the majority of the company’s business was focused on food service.

In the end, the ABC board agreed with Kline, but board chairman Charles Brodksy still said to Clay and Colon: “We think you did an end-run and opened up a nightclub in a neighborhood that doesn’t appreciate it. I live one block away, and I don’t appreciate it.”

Be that as it may, the Grey Goose Mansion promoters aren’t going against city ABRA regulations.

“They didn’t break the law, and if they did it somewhere else again, they wouldn’t be breaking the law,” says Cynthia Simms, a spokesperson for ABRA. Simms adds that ABRA may take a closer look at catering licensing, but, for now, the Grey Goose Mansion is completely above board.

“When we discovered it, it was like, ‘Wow, they really thought outside of the box and made this work,” Simms says.

“There are always creative ways to work within the law,” Kline says. “And that’s what they’ve done here.”

At the hearing, Clay also said that while Grey Goose is a special event meant to promote and increase brand awareness of the vodka brand, that he’s taken steps to ensure the safety of patrons and neighborhood residents, and he expressed willingness to talk with community members and make adjustments to the Grey Goose party to address some of their grievances. He stated that he had a security plan and a security detail. Weaver said neighbors often complained that people were haphazardly standing around the sidewalk trying to get in — the organizers put up ropes and created a line. Luke Berndt, who lives in a building next to Stroga, told me that speakers once rattled his windows, but that organizers moved them to another side of the building.

Clay also said during the hearing that rather than bringing in loud trucks to cart out the furniture each week after the event—the thing that neighbors were most upset about—items are now stored in the basement. He spoke of other concessions to the neighborhood, of doing things that may be required of nightclub and bar owners but not necessarily of party promoters.

At the end of the ABC hearing, Clay, Colon, Moretti, Weaver, and some Adams Morgan residents agreed to have a sit-down to talk about the issues and work on solutions. Weaver says that both the building’s owner and various promoters are all good folks, but that “goodwill has dried up.”

Even if the whole thing ends in a like-, if not a love-, fest, even if Clay, and the building’s owner, are responding to the community and trying to make improvements wherever possible, neighbors are concerned about what could happen if someone else takes the same creative interpretation of the city’s alcoholic beverage regulations and they’re not so willing to be good neighbors. Or if they decide to do an event that doesn't just take place one night a week, for a few months, but regularly, for an indefinite period of time.

“It could be SKYY Vodka Villa next” says Weaver. “There are just so many ways to do it.”

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There aren’t too many other places in Adams Morgan that, like the Stroga building, could sustain a regular party, but an enterprising promoter could duplicate what the Grey Goose Mansion organizers have done elsewhere in the city.

“This could essentially happen in any cool space,” says Berndt. “Look at places like NoMa, Mass. Ave., where you have lots of great old buildings right next to brand new apartments.”

“It’s a great business idea, honestly,” he continues. “A regular traveling party around town, and you can switch up caterers if one gets in trouble, you can switch venues if one of them gets in trouble — especially in neighborhoods where it’s tough to get a liquor license. It lets you skirt the system.”

In some ways, living next to an actual nightclub would almost be better, says Berndt. While bars and clubs in Adams Morgan must shut down at 2, special events at Stroga are able to go until 3 a.m. And, again, unlike a venue that has gone through a community input process and must comply with certain noise-abatement measures, a special event isn’t subject to the all of the same rules.

“One of the problems of operating in a space that isn’t designed to be a bar or club is that there isn’t permanent noise canceling in walls, there aren’t double-paned windows,” says Berndt. “There’s an alley there, but Stroga doesn’t have a nice loading dock to get in all of the stuff it takes to turn it from a yoga studio into a nightclub easily.”

“There’s a huge difference between a lounge, which hosts cocktail parties, and literally a nightclub concert venue,” Berndt continues. “The 9:30 Club is all well and good, but they’ve spent millions on a soundsystem and soundproofing — things you’re not going to get in a historic building.”

On a recent Friday night, Stroga/Grey Goose Mansion doesn't exactly feel like the next 9:30 Club.

The bottom floor is hosting the holiday party of an area non-profit; the organizers didn't grant a formal interview for this piece, but did tell me that they often give some of the building's space, free of charge, to community groups to host events. On Grey Goose Mansion night, Stroga has also hosted Archetype 25, a celebration of influential young Washingtonians, a Congressional Black Caucus event, a book party for Jay-Z's Decoded, and a couple of fundraisers.

Sonya Collins, who has been to Grey Goose Mansion, and another special event at Stroga, doesn’t understand the complaints about the noise. “The weekend I went was the probably the busiest Saturday in D.C. since Inauguration — Howard Homecoming, the Rally to Restore Sanity, Heineken Inspire, and I went that night,” she says. “Solange Knowles was the guest DJ, B.o.B. and Miguel performed — it was probably one of their best nights so far, but on that night, as far as noise level, it was no higher than somewhere like District, which is across the street, or the smaller spots up and down 18th Street.”

Neighbors say that the events at Stroga have violated the tacit residential/commercial boundaries in Adams Morgan. Typically, they say things are relatively quiet north of Columbia Road. Collins calls the parties innovative and says that Grey Goose Mansion is one of the most amazing concepts in the city.

“I don’t know what the problem is — it’s Adams Morgan,” says Collins, who promotes her own Tuesday night event at Recess, through her Rock Creek Social Club. “People are going to make noise, they’re going to hear loud music. It really frustrates me. I wish people were more receptive and welcoming to these outside-of-the-box events. I’m really supportive of the event, and tell people about it all the time. It really sucks that Adams Morgan residents are tripping off of this like it’s a brand new thing for them.”

Neighbors insist that is is a new thing for them. The neighborhood’s ANC, wanting to put restrictions on the number and type of events in the Stroga space, recently passed a resolution to request a catered site protest hearing for 1808 Adams Mill Road.

“This is not one of those things where someone moves to Adams Morgan and is complaining about a bar. These folks have been here.” says Moretti. The Mansion has a storied history, including parties thrown by Andy Warhol, but Moretti says that, until Stroga, the building has spent much of the last couple of decades (when it wasn’t vacant) as a home for city agencies and a methadone clinic. “This is a new use.”

“My neighbors on Calvert Street, across the alley, are young professionals, and they totally moved to Adams Morgan because they wanted nightlife at their front door, but they never expected to be sharing a wall with a yoga studio that has live bands on Saturday nights,” says Weaver.

“Granted, I’m sure the residents of Adams Morgan neighborhood, are just over nightlife in general, and I’d never want to live there for that reason, but if you live in Adams Morgan, you know what it’s like on Friday and Saturday nights, it’s been the same thing every week, forever,” says Collins. “For me, especially being a person who is all about the conceptualizing of events, I think it’s awesome. The support for it has been great, and the people in involved are a great group of people.”

Berndt doesn’t disagree with Collins on that last point. He speaks highly of the organizers and says, under different circumstances, he might pop over to Grey Goose Mansion.

“I think it’s a great group of people, I think it’s an awesome idea,” he says. “It’s an interesting loophole in the system, and it’s great that they were able to figure out a way to work within the system to have these events. But the caveat on all of this is that I have a 10-month-old. Other than that, it would be fun to go next door. “