I’ve been trying to verify the claim made by Jane Kinney that gunshots were fired into her flower store formally at 113 King Street, next to the Majestic Theater. I can’t find the report. I’ve tried many different search strings on LexisNexis and found nothing. I then searched through the archives at Madison.com, still nothing. I even checked the Madison Police Department press release search. I searched all the way back to 2001 for reports involving King St. Two incidents showed up, neither of which mentioned a gun, much less property damage.
I’ve asked around. No one remembers gunshots being fired at the flower shop. Did she make that up? If she’s going to claim that the club patrons carry weapons and have damaged her property with gunshots, shouldn’t there be a burden of proof? Shouldn’t the Wisconsin State Journal follow up with that since they printed her statement?
I did find one thing of interest though. When searching through the Madison.com archives I found an article about Kinney moving her flower store to Monroe St.
After more than 20 years in business Downtown, J. Kinney Florist will move to Monroe Street in August.
The neighborhood has turned into more of an entertainment district, store owner Jane Kinney said. “I just felt it would be better to be in an environment with other retailers.”
At 113 King St., the floral shop was next to Club Majestic and down the block from Madison’s Dining and Diversions. Across the street are King Club and Opus Lounge. All are nightclubs. “They’re open at night and we’re, of course, open during the day,” Kinney said. “There’s no reciprocal business. A big part of retail is the other businesses around you.”
J. Kinney Florist will nearly double its retail space when it takes over the storefront formerly occupied by the Life is Good store at 1835 Monroe St.
So did she move because he wanted to be near other retail businesses, or was it because of an unverified gun incident? It appears more believable that she moved to be near other retailers. That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is her claim about gunshots into her store that can’t be verified by searching the news media archives or the police press releases.
I was at The King Club across the street on the 26/27 of February when the police showed up to investigate a shooting.
http://1stepahead.typepad.com/blog/2005/02/where_did_we_go.html
There have been a number of times when I’ve left a show at The King Club to encounter the police aggressively blocking off the streets to do some pre-emptive crowd controlling.
Comment by Aaron — Tuesday 28 February, 2006 @ 14:47