Residents Rally Against Feared Eatery

By Nick Pinto
POSTED FEBRUARY 1, 2008

When Community Board 1 voted unanimously to recommend a liquor license for a “family-style” restaurant planned for the ground floor of a condominium at 25 North Moore Street last fall, the establishment’s future seemed all but certain.

But the neighborhood uproar that followed in the last month has caused a serious change of fortune, with the community board reversing its vote and the likelihood of the State Liquor Authority granting the license much diminished.

The owner of the as-yet-unnamed restaurant is Ross Provenzano, owner of the former sports bar Buster’s Garage, reviled by neighbors for its noisy and often drunken clientele. Neighbors worry that the “family-style restaurant” Provenzano is describing to state regulators is really the second coming of Buster’s.

(After much protest by residents of Leonard Street, Provenzano had withdrawn his liquor license application for a new Buster’s next door to the site of the former one at 180 West Broadway, where an apartment building is now rising.)

When they learned that the owner of Buster’s and the new restaurant were one and the same, the neighbors went into overdrive, leafletting, hiring a lawyer and chartering a bus to shuttle uptown many of the 40 residents who gathered for the SLA’s “500-foot” hearing.

At the Jan. 3 hearing, residents noted that there are already seven bars within 500 feet of the building, and argued that there is no shortage of family dining.

At the time of the hearing, Provenzano’s license application was not available for public review. It wasn’t until a few days later that Barry Mallin, the lawyer for the opponents of the new establishment, obtained a copy of the application through a Freedom of Information Act request.

What Mallin saw gave his clients new ammunition: while the floor plan submitted to the Community Board last year showed a small bar taking up little of the restaurant space, the plan sent to the State Liquor Authority revealed a much larger, U-shaped bar dominating the space, surrounded by high tables and stools.

On the basis of this discrepancy, residents appeared before CB1’s Tribeca Committee on Jan. 9 to ask its members to reconsider their recommendation.

Warren Pesetsky, the lawyer representing Provenzano and his team, said he had already changed their application to include only the earlier diagram with the smaller bar, eliminating the discrepancy.

“We do not believe that the board has the right to reverse itself absent a change in the method of operation that was filed with the SLA,” he said.

Pesetsky said revoking the Community Board’s vote would be unfair to the owner because he had already made financial commitments based on the approval.

Mallin countered that the Community Board’s vote is only advisory. “Any financial commitment they undertook on the basis of the Community Board they created at their own risk,” Mallin said. “It’s the SLA that issues licenses. There was no guarantee that they would be issued a license just because this Community Board passed a resolution of approval.”

Allen Murabayashi, the president of the 25 North Moore board, argued that the discrepancy between the two floor plans alone raises concerns about Provenzano’s true intentions with the space. “When an organization comes in and tries to misrepresent itself and spread misinformation,” he said, “that should cause pause for members of the community.”

Provenzano declined to comment for this story.

The Committee voted unanimously to revoke its earlier endorsement and recommend that Provenzano’s liquor license application be denied. A week later, CB1’s full board affirmed the resolution.

No date has been set for the SLA’s decision.

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