CB3's SLA committee meets tonight at the Public Hotel, 17th Floor, Sophia Room, 215 Chrystie St. between Houston and Stanton. The festivities start at 6:30.
Here's a look at a few of the applicants on the agenda:
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• 20 St Mark's Place — Applicants from Ichibantei, the 7-year-old "Japanese Soul Food & Drink" bar-restaurant on 13th Street near First Avenue, are looking to open a similar-sounding concept at 20 St. Mark's Place.
This space is above the Grassroots on the block between Second Avenue and Third Avenue that previously housed Sounds.
According to the application (PDF) at the CB3 website, this unnamed restaurant would seat 64 during their daily hours of 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.
The paperwork doesn't note if this would be a second location of Ichibantei or if they plan to move the business.
The fact that an applicant is looking to sell liquor in a space that wasn't previously licensed in a so-called Saturated Area has raised the ire of a few people on the block. While not named in the story, this application was the news hook in a St. Mark's Place Is Full-of-Bars piece in the Post yesterday.
Per the Post:
A proposal for yet another bar and restaurant at 20 St. Marks Place shows there are an astonishing 32 liquor licenses within 500 feet. And that’s before you count two more pending applications for watering holes, State Liquor Authority records show.
And...
“Stacking bars on top of bars is not a happy thought for me,” said Ian Fair who ran Sounds for many years and still lives in the building. He closed the shop in 2015 after the landlord tripled the rent.
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• 58 E. First St. — Applicants with experience at Casa Mizcal on Orchard Street and the Black Ant on Second Avenue are looking to open a restaurant called Boticarios in the space where Esperanto Fonda lasted nine months.
The application at the CB3 website (PDF) includes a sample menu.
While they haven't yet secured the liquor license, the owners have left a note for the neighboring residents about some renovations in the restaurant...
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• 210 Avenue A — Applicants for The Honey Fitz are making another run at Avenue A. The proprietors, James Morrissey and Ian Nolan (The Late Late on East Houston and The VNYL on Third Avenue), were looking to open in 2016 in the space that is now home to Starbucks on Avenue A and St. Mark's Place. However, they held off given the uncertainty at the time surrounding the lease at Nino's.
They are proposing a bar-restaurant with hours of 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. daily. (I don't know if the networking space for freelancers is part of this proposal as it was for the St. Mark's Place space.)
The application (PDF) has all sorts of details about the proposed venture, including the menu. No. 210 at 13th Street is currently home to Percy's Tavern, who presumably would close if all this is OK'd.
Updated 9/17
BoweryBoogie reports that CB3 denied the application for the Honey Fitz. Per BB:
[Residents] further alleged that bringing in Morrissey with a 4am liquor license, and who has a terrible track record with VYNL and The Late Late, would only exacerbate an already saturated area. Indeed, the latter operation is considered one of the worst offenders in the district, and carries a report card of more than thirty 311 complaints. Residents on East 1st Street regularly complain about noise, which first has to travel past a clamorous Houston Street and then through First Park.
Remember, of course, that the original intent of The Late Late was an Irish gathering space that would feature “Irish gourmet food” and small poetry readings. Talk about bait-and-switch. This could be why so many turned up to speak in opposition (i.e. more than a dozen).
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• 151 Avenue C — Studio 151, the three-year-old club from the owner of Nublu, is on the agenda for a new liquor license for the upstairs space here between Ninth Street and 10th Street.
I'm not sure what's going on with the space, which has been closed the past six months, per Studio 151's social media.
(You can find their CB3 application here.)
Neighbors have already been circulating flyers about this item...
[Photo by Steven]
The flyers cite Studio 151's "thirty year history of noise." To be fair, Studio 151 opened in July 2014. Speakeasy closed here in the spring of 2014.
