Quantcast

CB1 now requires bars to have full kitchen if they want outdoor space!

Tasty restaurant gossip

Start crying in your beer — North Brooklyn’s community board approved new liquor license rules on Tuesday night that will make it harder to open rooftop and backyard bars in the neighborhood.

Community Board 1 will now require new applicants to have a full kitchen on the premises if they intend to operate a bar with a rooftop or backyard space.

Existing bars with a backyard but no kitchen — including past decibel offenders Trophy Bar, Union Pool, and The Woods — are exempt from the policy, unless the owner wants to expand.

“The idea behind the rule is that bars tend to be louder, have more drinking, and more boisterous behavior while people sit and eat food with their drinks at a restaurant,” said Community Board 1 member Ward Dennis.

The board’s new policy also requires new applicants to also submit signatures from neighbors in support of the license and present the building’s certificate of occupancy to ensure that the site allows an “eating and drinking establishment,” or is brought up to code to do so.

The new proposal is far less stringent than the blanket moratorium on new bars, which Chairman Chris Olechowski introduced in April, but the board tabled for review a month later.

Board members nixed a moratorium on new licenses as well as a controversial ban on bars and restaurants in residentially zoned districts at last week’s public safety committee meeting.

The community board’s new liquor licenses policy only advisory — the State Liquor Authority has the ultimate say over whether new booze-serving businesses can open in the city’s neighborhoods.

An agency spokesman said there is “nothing radical” in the board’s nutritional mandate (if you will) since it codifies many standards the state requires to approve a liquor application.

The liquor board, for example, already requires food, though not a full kitchen, to be served at places with booze licenses.

“We need a [certificate of occupancy], and having community support is important in our decision making process regarding a new license,” add Liquor Authority spokesman William Crowley.

But some board members say new policy isn’t fair.

“It’s possible to sit in a back yard and drink beers and be a good neighbor,” said Community Board 1 member Ryan Kuonen, who abstained from the board’s vote this week.

And some bars without backyards, including Williamsburg’s Alma Lounge and Greenpoint’s The Production Lounge, are among the neighborhood’s most-pervasive nuisances, receiving police visits from playing music at ear-splitting levels.

Police even closed down yardless CoCo66 this summer for serving alcohol without a license, after a neighbor complained about loud volumes and crowds outside the Greenpoint Avenue watering hole.

Reach reporter Aaron Short at ashort@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2457.