A former nightclub on Fourth Avenue is getting a second life as a Met Foods supermarket, the latest move in Bay Ridge’s gradual transformation from club wonderland to bedroom community.
Store owner Sam Hamdan said that the new shop will open in January after the building, which also houses the Rankin Healey Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in its basement, is renovated.
Hamdan and other workers are ripping out the guts of the building and plan to install a shiny glass facade, but the veterans are staying put.
“They’re getting a brand new door and front. They’re happy,” said Hamdan outside the site between 93rd and 94th streets on Thursday.
The building was the former home of the Gazebo nightclub, which closed in 2007, according to the State Liquor Authority, and was briefly a restaurant, said Josephine Beckman, district manager of Community Board 10.
“Residents always like to see new supermarkets. Historically they haven’t really come to Bay Ridge because the buildings [are too small],” she said. “They really need 10,000 square feet to run a good business.”
In its halcyon days, Bay Ridge was the nightclub capital of Brooklyn thanks to popular clubs like the Golden Dove, Penthouse and 2001 Odyssey, made ultra-popular when it was featured in the seminal 1970s dance flick, “Saturday Night Fever.”
But the disco inferno has since died out, and nightclubs are now playing defense to a community board that cracks down on potentially rowdy clubs before they can open.
The State Liquor Authority told us last week that community boards have increasingly granted approval of liquor licenses only if business owners meet their demands — like hiring security guards, changing hours of operation, and, in some cases, changing the name of the business.
