Board Overrun With Liquor License Requests
The increasing number of bars and restaurants opening in Bushwick has Community Board 4 concerned, members noted during the advisory body’s Wednesday, Sept. 19 meeting at the Hope Gardens Senior Center.
Public Safety Committee Chair Barbara Smith urged the board to “be mindful” of the increasing number of liquor license applications in the community.
Smith claimed that the board is increasingly seeing as many as four different liquor license holders on one street, between bars, restaurants and grocery stores.
“We have to put a cap on how many liquor licenses could be on one block,” she argued. “We have more wine and beer bodegas than there are churches and schools.”
“People are coming out of one bar, going into the next one, falling out of that one, going into the next one, and then they come out and urinate on the sidewalk,” she added.
P.O. Damarys Franco of the 83rd Precinct Community Affairs Unit noted that the amount of 311 calls coming in regarding quality-of-life issues surrounding local bars is “ridiculous.”
“If they’re going to do business in Bushwick, there are nightlife guidelines that they have to follow,” she told Board 4.
Low-income housing endorsed
Board 4 voted to endorse Poko Partners’ application for a low-income housing tax credit for a mixeduse development at 839 Broadway dubbed the Broadway Park Apartments.
The 55,000 sq. ft. development features 31 residential units and 21,000 sq. ft. of retail space.
Forty percent of the units will be under 50 percent of the Area Median Income.
Attorney Kenneth Olson claimed that “overwhelmingly, people lease from within the community.”
District Manager Nadine Whitted noted that one-bedroom units will range from $564 to $875 a month, calling the prices “some of the best rents I’ve heard of in a long time” compared to some of the rents in new
