Opinion: Lobbyists push bills to flood us with liquor licenses, push out needed stores

BY LESLIE CLARK | The restaurant-liquor industrial complex is on a roll. Unless they are stopped, they’re going to roll right over our neighborhoods. For years, the “hospitality sector” has wanted less interference from the “community” and more freedom to sell cocktails on the sidewalk, the roadway, in the cellar and on the rooftop. And their wishes are coming true.

Today lobbyists are crowing over “significant changes” to liquor licensing laws in the governor’s budget that will shorten the window of time in which residents can even find out about applications for new bars in their neighborhood before they’re licensed. And the “temporary” pandemic provisions allowing a bar’s indoor liquor license to move outdoors is now permanent. Looks like our governor thinks there’s nothing wrong with carrying trays of margaritas across chaotic bike lanes to a plywood-and-plastic roadway shack. It’s called “updating” the law! Takeaway drinks? That’s still temporary — for a “temporary “five years.

As if that weren’t enough, there are still two more bills before the state Legislature that are very friendly to lobbyists — and decidedly unfriendly to residents of neighborhoods like ours, which has the highest ratio of bars to residents in all of New York State.

The first is A8427a, a bill that would allow landlords to quickly flip previously unlicensed spaces to yet more bars with full-on, on-premises liquor licenses. Technical language here: A “previously unlicensed space” is that shoe repair shop, stationery store, laundromat or hardware store that you actually need if you live in New York City. The current law’s intent is that on-premises licenses should be issued only after a thoughtful, multi-step process that considers whether it’s in the “public interest” to open yet another liquor-dispensing business in an area already with plenty of them. It’s such a serious decision that state law says that only the full board of the State Liquor Authority has the right and power to decide on what is in the “public interest.”

But the new legislation — sponsored by state Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Harvey Epstein — would allow a landlord to dispose of that butcher, baker or new-tech maker by making it oh so easy for a new bar to get a “temporary” license (which will be paying top-dollar rent to that landlord). All of this would happen before the State Liquor Authority has exercised its unique power to determine just what the “public interest” means on your street.

Why would any legislator want to help a landlord convert a shoe repair space to a bar — and fast? The standard reason is that the S.L.A. has a long licensing backlog. This legislation would cut the waiting time by giving a “temporary” license to that bar before the full legal licensing process has been completed.

But is that license really “temporary”? Once that bar is up and running with its “temporary” license, will the S.L.A. really take it away if the authority finally decides that it is not in the “public interest”? No way. Anyone who watches S.L.A. hearings regularly knows that bar owners easily convince the commissioners that the bar owner’s economic needs are the S.L.A.’s economic imperative — i.e., get them licensed and keep them licensed!

So, the Legislature is now poised to solve a truly temporary licensing backlog with yet more “temporary” licenses that won’t be temporary at all. Look around your neighborhood. Once a storefront flips from mom-and-pop bodega to buzz-fed bar, has it ever flipped back to something that you might find useful — like a hardware store or children’s clothing store? And with permanent outdoor dining, that bar isn’t just on your corner anymore. It’s on your sidewalk and your roadway, under foot as you try to walk by and underneath your windows.

And, by the way, the “public interest” requirement? That comes from a 1993 law (the Padavan Law a.k.a. the 500-Foot Rule) that has given residents a fighting chance to challenge the rampant invasion of bars, restaurants and nightclubs in their neighborhoods for the last 30 years. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the Legislature is also considering a bill — S6785, sponsored by state Senator James Skoufis from the oh-so-quiet Hudson Valley — that would get rid of that safeguard against bar oversaturation, too. Why? Because some legislators think that considering the “public interest” gets in the way of “economic development” — a popular legislative term that translates as: “We can’t think of any other way to get more tax revenues than by pushing alcohol — and cannabis and casinos.”

You might want to let your state legislator know that you are part of the “public” and that it is in the Legislature’s “interest” to hear your opinions on appropriate “economic development.”

Clark is a member, West Village Residents Association.