Since it opened in 2009, the Puerto Rican restaurant Sazon has been the source of noise complaints from nearby residents on Reade Street. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Restaurant manager Edward Rodriguez has inherited a slew of problems.
With almost a year on the job as general manager of Sazon, the popular but locally troubled Puerto Rican restaurant at 105 Reade St., he came in earnest to Community Board 1’s Tribeca Committee last month with hopes of showing good intentions—and the request to serve alcohol until 4 a.m., Thursday to Saturday.
What followed was a litany of complaints that neighbors have been leveling at the 150-seat establishment almost since it opened in 2009.
Currently, Sazon must stop serving liquor at 1 a.m., and Rodriguez was seeking CB1’s advisory approval to the State Liquor Authority for an alteration to his license. The committee and the full board turned him down. (He is nevertheless going ahead with the application.)
According to several Reade Street residents who attended the meeting, noisy crowds gather on the street, restaurant windows stay open beyond an agreed-upon 7 p.m., and the sidewalk at times doubles as a toilet.
“It’s very loud out there,” said Mark Dimor, who lives nearby. Patrons congregate on the sidewalk, he added, “just after drinking it up, singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and then going on their way. Then the next wave comes out.”
Rodriguez, who owned the South Street Seaport restaurant Salud until Hurricane Sandy shuttered it, acknowledged that large groups go in and out of his place between 8 and 10 in the evening. But he denied residents’ claims that the disturbances go late into the night.
Lisa Schiller, a 24-year Reade Street resident, lamented the changes that places like Sazon and other nearby bars and restaurants have brought to her once- quiet street. “Staying open until four in the morning is an abuse to the people who have lived on this block,” she said.
Still, Rodriguez argued that he loses customers to nearby places like Ward III and Maxwell’s that are already licensed to serve alcohol until 4 a.m. And he maintained that he has been trying to make improvements. “I changed the culture of the clientele,” he said.
In an interview with the Trib, Rodriguez said that owner Genero Morales brought him in “to turn the restaurant around.” Since taking over last December, he said, the menu, reservation system and lounge décor have all been revamped to make Sazon a classier and quieter place. “It’s no longer this rowdy disco hangout,” he said. “It’s a full-blown restaurant establishment and I want to be known for that.”
Rodriguez is hardly helped by the restaurant’s history. Soon after Sazon opened in 2009, neighbors complained not only about crowd noise, but also about dancing and live music in the downstairs lounge. The restaurant allegedly violated State Liquor Authority stipulations against those activities in the license it was granted in 2010 and neighbors continued to complain. So Community Board 1 was in no mood to comply with owner Morales’s request in 2011 for advisory approval of a second bar and DJ in the basement lounge.
“The applicant has repeatedly, openly, and brazenly operated in violation of the stipulations to which he originally agreed,” the board said in its resolution denying the request. Morales shot back with a much-publicized $50-million lawsuit against CB1, claiming racial descrimination. A federal judge later dismissed the case.
Rodriguez said he was aware of “issues” with the restaurant when he took the job. “I heard about it and it is important for me to make changes,” he said.
In recommending that the Tribeca Committee deny Rodriguez’s request, co-chair Michael Connolly noted that neighbors have yet to see “sufficient enough change.” But he told the manager he could come back with his request next summer.
“We’re looking for more signs of good faith going forward,” Connolly said.