SLA

Shame on SLA
by Livvie Mann

It's a long story.... two years long and counting. It's a story that's all too familiar in Greenwich Village, where, for every 186 residents, man, woman, and child, there is a bar of some kind. It's a story of community faith in law and government running aground on the shoals of bureaucratic cynicism and lawlessness.

A little background. The Bedford Downing area has been as unfashionable a backwater as it's possible to have in Greenwich Village - quiet, somewhat dowdy, residentially zoned, economically mixed. Suddenly, late in 1998, like mushrooms after a rain, bars began popping up. Predictably, quality of life in the neighborhood declined. Small service businesses were forced out as landlords emptied storefronts, allowing them to become derelict as they held out for high-paying, alcohol-serving tenants. Complaints about garbage, crowded sidewalks, traffic, and especially noise were on the rise; the bars were the source of the problems.

No surprise, then, that in May, 1999, when Community Board 2 posted notice of another liquor license application, folks were upset. Three storefronts, warehoused despite efforts by other small businesses to rent them, were being combined by Charisma, Inc. into a single bar/restaurant, Isla. It would be the fifth to open in 18 months in just two short blocks.

There is a law that says that if there are already 3 licensed premises within 500 feet, the State Liquor Authority must show that a new license is in the public interest before it can be granted. There were already 20 fully licensed premises within 500 feet of Isla's Downing Street location, and the neighborhood was suffering. "What luck!" said some upon learning of the law. "This will protect us." "Good luck!" said others with more experience. So began a neighborhood's tortured relationship with the New York State Liquor Authority, likened by some to be second only in weirdness to Alice's descent into the rabbit hole.

Residents quickly educated themselves in the steps required for a neighborhood to make itself heard by the SLA. First stop: Community Board 2; the law requires that the SLA consult with the community in making licensing decisions. By assembling maps, petitions, postcards, letters, (including letters from every elected official) and testifying in numbers at both the Businesses and Institutions Committee and the Full Board, the community demonstrated beyond a doubt that a new liquor license in the neighborhood would be contrary to the public interest. CB 2 agreed and voted overwhelmingly to deny the application.

Then there was testimony before an administrative law judge at the SLA offices, for which many people had to take time off from work. Next, there was the SLA's 500 foot rule hearing, and again people arranged to take time off. They might as well have gone to the office, as only a scant handful was allowed to speak at this public hearing. Those lucky enough to reach the podium were close enough to the three presiding SLA commissioners to see their uvulae tremble when they yawned, to hear the squeak of their chairs as they swiveled like restless 8 year olds, and to catch the full brunt of their impatience as they peevishly interrupted.

Ultimately, the commissioners cut off testimony, hoisted themselves up, and disappeared into a back room. Moments later they emerged, granted the license, and moved on to new business. Their reason for granting the license, which appeared weeks later was, "It's a bona fide restaurant serving Cuban food." No mention of how this served the public interest was being served or of the extensive public opposition.

In essence the SLA was saying, "So sue us." With no other recourse, six residents, five plaintiffs and their attorney, Craig Albert, did just that. In January, 2000 Waldman vs the SLA was joined. In May of 2000 New York State Supreme Court judge Diane Lebedeff found in favor of the plaintiffs and in October, she ordered the SLA to revoke Charisma's license. End of story? Community victory? No.

Isla appealed the decision, liquor license to remain in effect during the appeal. They began the process of applying for a new liquor license. How could a new license be granted if the old one was still in place? Two licenses for the same establishment? Neither Ed Gold nor Doris Diether, Community Board 2 veterans with years of SLA experience between them, could figure out what was going on.

Back in the neighborhood, it was "deja vu all over again", as residents turned out, twice, to speak against license #2 before the Community Board. Again CB 2 voted overwhelmingly to deny the license, this time chiding the SLA for their role in allowing such a charade to occur.

Residents were spared a 500 Foot Rule Hearing this time. The SLA had changed the rules in mid-game. Effective as of this case, the SLA no longer allowed the public to attend 500 Foot Rule Hearings. A coincidence? The process moved forward, inexorable as a train wreck, to what, in hindsight, was clearly its inevitable conclusion. On March 7, 2001, in an unscheduled action, the SLA commissioners, in an apparent nod to the law, revoked Isla's original liquor license. Then the three disappeared for their requisite sojourn in the back room. This time they reappeared in seconds and granted Isla a brand new liquor license.

Shortly after license #2 was issued, the Appellate Court turned down Isla's appeal and ordered that their 1st license be revoked. The decision slammed the barn door after the horse had galloped off. The first license was history, and the bar was pouring drinks under license #2, just as the SLA had apparently planned all along.

With this flagrantly cynical act the SLA demonstrated its disregard for the law, for the will of elected officials, for the New York State Supreme Court, for the counsel of the community board, and for overwhelming public opinion. And the gesture went further, coming as it did a week before Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver convened a day-long hearing in Manhattan to explore widespread complaints about, ironically, the SLA's lack of sensitivity to the community. It established the SLA's disdain for the legislature that created it in the first place. Frankenstein's monster is loose, and the peasants haven't two pitchforks to rub together.

What's ahead for the Bedford Downing neighborhood? Residents could, of course, go to court and challenge Isla's license #2, and any other new liquor license applications. They could, that is, if they were willing to be actors in an exhausting "Ground Hog Day" scenario, in which they must relive the entire Isla experience, from petitions, to lawsuit, to legal victory, and back to square one over and over again. With the SLA comfortably above the law, the outcome would always be a foregone conclusion.

Whats's ahead for the SLA? At Speaker Silver's hearing the voices raised against the SLA's capricious issuance of liquor licenses were many and varied, and included Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and representatives from virtually every elected official, community board, and block association south of 59th Street. Nothing has come of that hearing, just as nothing came from a similar hearing four years ago. For now, barring a class action suit by beleaguered communities, it looks like business as usual at the SLA.
There's no question that the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law is flawed as it applies to our community. The standard of three licensed premises within 500 feet, for example, is unrealistic in Manhattan. But the spirit behind it is sound: neighborhoods need protection from saturation by and abuses of licensed premises. And, flawed or not, it is the law, and the SLA's responsibility to the public is to uphold it, not make a mockery of it. We deserve better.