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Neighbors plead with restaurant owner for peace and quiet

By Matt Dunning

Barbara Spitzer, a Reade Street resident, told members of Community Board 1 that the Sazon restaurant across the street from her apartment is far too noisy for a residential neighborhood.
Carl Glassman / Tribeca Trib
Barbara Spitzer, a Reade Street resident, told Community Board 1's Tribeca Committee that the Sazon restaurant across the street from her apartment is too noisy for a residential neighborhood. Behind Spitzer, from right to left, are Reade Street residents Kelly Adams, Barry Segal and Lisa Schiller.

Since it opened in January, local lifestyle magazines and blogs have been abuzz about Sazon, the new Tribeca hot spot where the food is Puerto Rican and the downstairs lounge, as one reviewer put it, is the place to go for ““the wild salsa party you always wish you knew about.”

 

But reviews from neighbors have been anything but glowing, with many complaining of sleepless nights brought on by the steady din of boisterous diners and thumping music.

On Wednesday, several of those neighbors aired their grievances face to face with the eatery’s owner, Genero Morales.

“It’s a party atmosphere,” Reade Street resident Barbara Spitzer told Morales during the special Aug. 12 meeting of Community Board 1’s Tribeca Committee. “With two other bars [Ward 3 and Mary Ann’s] on the block, Reade Street feels like I’m living on Seventh Avenue.”

Armed with a stack of emails to police, 311 complaints and photos of crowds outside the restaurant, the residents told Morales that the noise is made worse by the restaurant’s open windows and traffic that clogs Reade Street on busy weekend nights.

“What we have is a destination place,” Reade Street resident Anne Kelly said. “People are coming here to have fun. Fun is good, but it’s not very good on a residential street.”

Sazon owner Genero Morales promised Reade Street residents he would do more to combat noise problems his restaurant has been causing.
CARL GLASSMAN/TRIBECA TRIB
Sazon owner Genero Morales promised Reade Street residents he would do more to combat noise problems his restaurant has been causing.

“My feeling is that [Sazon] is a club, and it’s the wrong place,” added Barry Segal, 99 Reade St. “It ought to be somewhere else.”

Morales and his attorney, Martin Mehler, first tried to hang the complaints on a “cultural problem.”

“When I’m told that there’s no other place [on the block] that had crowds in front of it that make noise, I begin to get a feeling,” Mehler said.

The implication of anti-Latino bias brought a terse response from the residents. “You really shouldn’t go there,” Spitzer told Mehler. “It’s really inappropriate, and it’s quite offensive.”

Tribeca Committee chairman Peter Braus, who presided over the committee’s initial vote of support for a liquor license for Sazon in January, sided with the residents. Braus said that the owner misrepresented the restaurant to his committee and on his application for a liquor license, which the State Liquor Authority has yet to grant. (The restaurant, in the meantime, has been getting by on a series of temporary licenses.)

 

In this photo taken by a Reade Street resident and shown at the CB1 committee meeting, patrons gather in front of Sazon last month in the early evening.
COURTESY OF ANNE KELLY
In this photo taken by a Reade Street resident and shown at the CB1 committee meeting, patrons gather in front of Sazon last month in the early evening.

Morales, who had been preparing to take over the 3,700-square-foot space formerly occupied by the restaurant Fresh, promised the committee he

would not apply for a cabaret license, which the city requires if there is dancing. He also said and that any music in the restaurant would emanate solely from a small stereo system.

 

“There’s a discrepancy, clearly, between how you represented yourself [in January] and how the community perceives you,” Tribeca Committee chairman Peter Braus said.

At the Aug. 12 meeting, Morales told the residents that he had already taken some measures to lessen the noise. He said he had hired an extra doorman, ordered all windows closed at 7 p.m. every night and would soon post signs outside the restaurant urging patrons to be mindful of the neighbors.

“I don’t blame them,” Morales said of the residents. “No one is looking to antagonize the neighborhood. If I lived on that block, I’d feel the same way.”

In a letter to the Community Board delivered the day after the meeting, Mehler said Morales has also promised to install a second door at the entrance to help keep noise inside the restaurant. The letter did not mention banning DJs or live bands from playing at the restaurant.