A Williamsburg community board approved a liquor license for a surprisingly controversial upscale wine bar that a small but angry group of residents has bitterly fought on the grounds that the party neighborhood is oversaturated with watering holes — even though the opponents were silent when 19 other bars were rubber-stamped for the same licenses.
On Wednesday night, Community Board 1 voted 17-14 to recommend a liquor license for Custom American Wine Bar — the Driggs Avenue tapas bar that has become the focus of neighborhood ire for months.
“Finally, experienced operators are coming to the neighborhood,” said board member Mieszko Kalita, who chaired a raucous public safety committee meeting last Thursday where dozen opponents focused their assault on the wine bars owners, clashing with at least 30 supporters.
“We want to see and welcome more people like them in our streets,” he added. “With a bar like this, our streets are alive and not just closed gates. These owners have six liquor licenses in Manhattan without any complaints.”
Opponents — including actor Danny Hoch — persisted, saying that the bar will attract binge drinkers, public urinators and gang violence, but co-owner Stefan Mailvaganam, who also co-owns Bar Carrera, a tapas bar in Manhattan, fired back with a petition including more than 300 signatures, including one from an NYPD detective from the neighborhood.
His supporters had questioned the opponents’ motives last week.
“Custom American Wine Bar will attract the opposite of gangs and frat boys,” said Yann de Rochefort, who owns Boqueria tapas bar in Manhattan. “The community board should encourage places like Stefan’s.”
The Public Safety Committee did not fully agree on Thursday, sending a mixed message in the form of a tie vote — the only non-approval of a very long night of rubber-stamping liquor license applications. That brought the liquor license request to the full community board on Wednesday night. The approval was conditioned on the bar closing at midnight on weekdays and at 2 am on weekends.
The saga to get a license has consumed four months and $20,000, said Mailvaganam and his co-owner Dan Lathroum, who particularly objected to opponents’ claim that “outsiders” have ruined Williamsburg because he lives on N. Fourth Street, not far from his proposed bar.
But on Wednesday, Mailvaganam was relieved.
“The most important thing right now is to bring everyone in the community back together and for us to commit to them,” he said. “There is no ill will between us and we want to demonstrate that this is a restaurant for everyone. I hope the opponents come.”
Even in a party-hardy neighborhood like Williamsburg, liquor license controversies are extremely rare, said Kalita. “This is the first time there has been such a roar [about a license],” he said.
It remains unclear what the opponents find objectionable about the wine bar in comparison to all the other bars that got approved without any comments. Last week, opponents would not talk on the record, but they did circulate an unsigned e-mail that began, “The fight against the bars continues.”
“The issue is not whether the bar owners are nice and willing to negotiate with the community, but that there are already five establishments with full liquor licenses within 500 feet [of Custom American Wine Bar],” it said. “We can’t be distracted by the owners’ statements that they want to be a part of our community and improve it! Those statements are both vague and a bit patronizing. We have the right to chose what constitutes improvement and livability.”
The e-mail wrongly suggested that the State Liquor Authority’s “500-foot rule” requires that bars be separated by at least that distance. In fact, the rule merely gives the State Liquor Authority greater oversight if a bar wants to open within 500 feet of three existing establishments with liquor licenses.
And many wine bars skirt such issues by applying only for beer and wine licenses, not full booze permission.
The opposition is being spearheaded by Nancy Wechter, who, ironically, lives in libertine writer Henry Miller’s childhood home on Driggs Avenue. When it came time for her to speak at the hearing, she addressed the wine bar’s co-owners: “I respect your professionalism, but I am here to prevent yet another bar from depriv[ing] us from sleep. I don’t want to be run out of my house.”
Thursday’s hearing was frequently heated, with the owner of the building, Dobrivoye Filipovich, getting tossed after calling a staffer for Councilwoman Diana Reyna “a drug dealer” and branding Wechter a “criminal.”
Later, his son, Greg Filipovich, said that he trusts the wine bar owners and, besides, he needs a stable tenant to fill his empty space.
“My taxes have doubled from $20,000 to $40,000,” he said. “If we can’t get this liquor license then I will have to open a 24-hour bodega that sells beer, and maybe even wine. Then, [the neighbors] will really get a crowd of kids hanging around.”