War Over License Transfer For Buster's

By Andrea Appleton
POSTED OCT. 2, 2006

Chunks of concrete littered the parking garage at 24 Leonard Street and a pile of rubble lay in mounds out back on a weekday afternoon last month. A few men stood idly at the garage entrance. Eric Ness surveyed the cavernous space. “I’m getting married in two months,” he said, arms folded across his chest, “and I just started collecting unemployment for the first time in my life.”

Ness is the former general manager of Buster’s Garage, a bar at 180 West Broadway that, along with Diablo’s Cantina next door, closed in August to make way for a residential building that will go up on the site. At the time, it did not occur to Ness and his coworkers that their jobs were in jeopardy. After all, the bar, owned by Ross Provenzano, was to move just around the corner, into a converted part of the parking garage on Leonard Street, also owned by Provenzano. All they needed to do was transfer the bar’s liquor license to a new location a few feet away.

It was a bureaucratic detail that has provoked a fierce battle.

On one side are the owners, employees and patrons of the sports bar, a two-story space that featured “Bucket O’ Beers” specials, $10 all-you-can-drink happy hours, and private parties with open-bar packages known as “lube jobs.”

On the other side are the neighbors, most of whom live next to the garage at 18 Leonard St. Until relations recently soured, many of them leased parking spaces from Provenzano.

The residents are fighting the liquor license transfer every step of the way, saying their block is not an appropriate location for a sports bar. They worry that the bar will be loud and overflowing with drunken patrons. They say Leonard Street is too narrow to handle extra traffic, and that cigarette smoke from the designated smoking area out back will drift into their windows. They say the old location was disruptive enough, and the move will only make matters worse.

A public affairs officer from the 1st Precinct said that no arrests had ever been made at the old Buster’s, but that the police did sometimes receive complaints on days of major sporting events. At a meeting of Community Board 1’s Tribeca Committee last month, Donna Ferrato, condo president of 25 Leonard St., spoke out, directly to Buster’s representatives. “You will not get away with this,” she said. “We will organize and the results will not be pretty.”

True to their word, the residents have banded together under the leadership of Kris Brown, president of 18 Leonard Street, known as the Juilliard Building. They’ve flooded the State Liquor Authority with letters, and on Sept. 27, representatives from eight neighboring condominiums agreed to retain a lawyer with expertise in fighting liquor licenses, at an estimated cost of up to $20,000. They also may hire a traffic expert to evaluate congestion on Leonard Street.

Provenzano is incensed by the opposition. “After 9/11, everybody and their mother wanted us down here,” he told the Trib as he stood outside the garage. “And now they’re afraid their kids are going to get hit by cars.” He pointed out that the area is zoned as commercial, not residential. That aside, Buster’s representatives said they were willing to make concessions, such as installing soundproofing and revising plans for the smoking area. But many neighbors say the only good bar on their block is no bar at all.

 “There is definitely a ‘nimby’ element, don’t get me wrong,” said Brown. “But I’m opposed to it not just because it’s right next to my home. It’s just not a good location. It’s a quiet residential street.” Brown added that it was Provenzano who chose to sell the bar’s previous location to a developer. “As far as I’m concerned, they put their own employees out of work.”

At a meeting of the full community board on Sept. 19, dozens came to support one side or the other and more than 30 spoke, about evenly split for and against the Buster’s plan. But no board member voted for it. Two abstained. 

Provenzano was livid. “It was a foregone conclusion,” he said after nearly tussling with a board member in the hallway following the vote. “Where’s the community vote? Do you have to be on the board to have that vote?”

Provenzano must now go before the State Liquor Authority, where a final decision will be rendered. No hearing date is set, but residents are bracing for a fresh skirmish and Buster’s isn’t backing down.

“We’re not going away,” Ness said. “The community board is only advisory.”