KC nightlife used to shut down way too early, or so the convention-goers complained.

You couldn’t order a drink past 1:30 a.m. anywhere in town unless you knew of some illegal, after-hours club that the cops hadn’t raided.

Of course, it’s been different since 3 a.m. liquor licenses came in during the 1980s.

But if regulated industries chief Gary Majors has his way, last call could come 90 minutes earlier in some parts of town. Places like the West Side, where bars with 3 a.m. closing times butt up against neighborhoods and create lots of headaches.

“Our concerns,” West Side neighborhood leader Linda Callon said, “are in response to the shootings and the violence and the litter and the ancillary things that happen…

 “The pee, the condoms, the vomit. When they leave the bars and shoot the guns in the air, the bullets come down somewhere.”

Not all 3 a.m. bars are bad neighbors. But Majors gets enough complaints, he told me, that he’s working on what was until now an unpublicized proposal to help many Kansas Citians get a better night’s sleep.

 “The point would be to put all the 3 a.m. bars into certain areas of the city,” he said, citing Westport, Downtown and Zona Rosa as examples. “That way, if you chose to move into a known entertainment district, you’d know what you were getting into.”

Also, the Police Department might be better able to focus limited resources on a few late-night hot spots, rather than potentially dozens of them all over the city.

Thing of it is, this wouldn’t be an issue if past city councils had stuck with the original intent of the 1981 state law allowing bars in Kansas City and St. Louis to stay open 90 minutes past the state-mandated 1:30 a.m. closing time.

Some will remember it was supposed to promote tourism.

“This means we can compete with New York, Chicago, Dallas and New Orleans – cities that all have later closing hours,” then-Gov. Kit Bond was quoted as saying in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Yet today more than 130 KC establishments hold what’s officially known as a “convention trade area 3 a.m. closing permit,” Only a few are anywhere near Bartle Hall.

Bar owners fought to have the entire city designated a “convention trade area.” Now, if your bar meets certain sales requirements and is within one mile of a hotel or motel – fleabags included – you can apply for a late closing license.

“There’s just a huge risk of putting 3 a.m. bars with residents,” said David Morris, president of the Crossroads Community Association, bringing up the recent late-night shootings in Westport, the Power & Light District and his own neighborhood.

Therefore, the Crossroads favors the proposal to limit 3 a.m. liquor licenses to designated districts, Morris says, and has no desire, with all its loft dwellers, to become one.

“We don’t want to become another Westport,” he said.

Conversely, you’d think those who do business in designated 3 a.m. districts would be happy to see competition limited over time. (Current 3 a.m. license holders would be grandfathered in, as Majors envisions things now.)

And maybe some will be pleased, once the proposal gets some airing.

But Bill Nigro, a longtime Westport bar and restaurant owner and head of the Kansas City Business Rights Coalition, isn’t convinced that 3 a.m. districts are the way to go.

“On weekends, we already get this mass of people that descend on (Westport) late at night,” he said.

Changing the rules will only make it worse, he fears, if Westport and some other areas are the only places drinks are served on the Missouri side past 1:30.

Instead, Nigro would rather see the city crack down harder on “the bad boy clubs,” as he calls those that cause the most trouble. Maybe force them to hire off-duty cops to provide security.

Only that’s not going to happen unless the police department reverses a policy that keeps off-duty officers from moonlighting at bars. Plus, it doesn’t address the conflicts with the neighborhoods.

So look for Majors’ proposal to come up for discussion before long. Ivanhoe neighborhood leader Walt May sure would support it.

The liquor stores in Ivanhoe cause enough problems, he said, without a 3 a.m. club adding to it.

“We believe that he have enough establishments selling alcohol in the area already,” he said.

“Too many.”