Pardon Me For Asking: Hoyt Street Alliance Issues Statement After Controversial C.B.6 Vote On Bar

Since last week's controversial C.B.6 vote supporting the proposed oyster bar on Hoyt Street, the Hoyt Street Alliance, which opposed it, has been quiet. Now they have issued a press release to express their disappointment with the entire process and with C.B.6's bias for restaurant and bar owners over the objections of the immediate neighbors.

This is an issue that HAS to be addressed by our local board. Labeling residents who want to protect the living quality in this city as nimbys or suggesting that they should move to the suburbs is not helpful. Finding a balance between the needs of residents and businesses is. We should all demand that of our board, because hey, you never know, a bar may just open up right next to you, too!

The Hoyt Street Alliance
Sharing a commitment to maintain our neighborhood's character

294 HOYT STREET BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 11231

April 16, 2008

Do you live near a ground floor medical office? If you do, brace yourself. Hoyt Street residents recently learned that their local Community Board considers a newly vacant doctor’s office an excellent place for…yet another new “theme” liquor bar with restaurant!

Hoyt Street neighbors were extremely disappointed by CB6’s decision last week to support the creation of a new liquor bar in the center of a 5-block-long residential area. The location, 299-301 Hoyt Street, was occupied for the previous 25 years by a pediatrician. At the same time, the Hoyt Street Alliance was heartened by “no” votes from Board members Celia Cacace, Mark Shames, and Lou Sones, who among others listened thoughtfully to our arguments. We feel that anyone who studies photographs of the block can see that the proposed bar is centered directly between St. Agnes’s church and P.S. 32. The possibility of a 48-foot-wide barroom intruding between such iconic neighborhood sites, in an area heavily traveled by children, is an unfortunate image for the neighborhood and for Brooklyn as a whole.

The Hoyt Street Alliance, a group of homeowners and residents, is grateful for the support of groups like P.S. 32’s PTA and the Gowanus tenants council in the effort to prevent the bar from opening, and looks forward to rallying further local support before the operator’s liquor license application is submitted to the State Liquor Authority. Whether or not the bar intrudes on the 200-ft. buffer space required by law between it and the church to the north and the elementary school to the south is still a matter for debate; different maps disagree on the exact distance. That the bar is not welcomed by its residential neighbors is certain. However, since the Community Board has now taken the extraordinary step of recommending to the State Liquor Authority that the proposed liquor license be granted, it will be a tough fight to stop it.

Our neighbors were initially notified of a CB6 Land Use Committee meeting to consider the bar five days before the meeting, which days included the long New Years weekend (four days for most people). We had no time to prepare or organize ourselves. We arrived at the meeting to find the proposed bar’s owner placed in charge of the meeting to answer our questions. One lone neighbor said she would feel safer coming home at night if the bar was there. In spite of the fact that a half dozen or so of us spoke strongly against it, the committee seemed to rely on this one statement and voted to recommend the bar. They never discussed the implications of letting our residential block become a spill-over area for Smith Street expansion.

Later, the full board ratified the committee vote. For several meetings they seemed only interested in building department procedures. Again, there was no real discussion of what was right for the community. There were several comments that members of our block association had wronged the board by strongly criticizing the way the board was handling this issue, and basically used this as a reason to vote for the bar.

CB6 urgently needs to craft new methods to address the runaway proliferation of eating and drinking establishments in South Brooklyn neighborhoods. Much confusion exists about what the Board’s role is supposed to be in this process. We hoped they would act as advocates for local residents, and were unhappily surprised to learn that few members saw themselves in that light. Most seemed unpleasantly surprised by local citizen’s swift, vocal opposition to the proposed liquor bar, and some hastily arrived-at assumptions regarding the neighborhood and the proposed bar were wrongly accepted as true.

For example, Hoyt Street neighbors were told they should be grateful for a late-night business on the block, because its presence would inhibit crime; but those of us who have lived on the block for 30 years and more have experienced almost zero in the way of street crime. In contrast, residents of booze-rich Smith Street experience regular nighttime nuisances in the form of noise, brawling, vermin and litter, as well as light and noise pollution. Common sense dictates that using alcohol to attract hundreds of strangers onto our small, narrow block every week will NOT make our lives safer or happier.

Ironically, most CB6 members seemed perfectly willing to accept developer Jim Mamary’s definition of his projected establishment as “a restaurant, not a bar” despite the fact that his floor plans show no kitchen and his sample menu lists only raw oysters and “things on skewers.” A refrigerator does not a restaurant make!

CB6 claims to have heard testimony from numerous residents of the block who favored the applicant. If there are such people, they certainly didn’t feel strongly enough to speak publicly at the last three Board meetings about the matter. Who they are and what their influence might be remains a question mark. On the opposing side, three hundred petitioners willingly signed their names and addresses in protest of the bar. But disturbingly, neighbors attending the most recent Board meeting were warned that if we didn’t accept the bar, we’d “end up with something we liked even less.”

One CB6 member who vehemently supported the bar’s developers called the Hoyt Street Alliance speakers liars, saying, “No one lives across from that address – there are only three garages there. Unless someone’s living in their car, what’s the problem?” His flippant remarks ignored the substantial, multigenerational family home connected to the small building housing three one-car spaces --hardly the vast parking facility his tone implied. But noise will doubtless travel across that little garage roof and carry into several backyards of Union Street, putting a stop to peaceful summer evenings in the garden and even ending the possibility of open windows for many whose homes are there.

In at least this instance Community Board 6 did not consider the best interests of the community. From what we could tell many of the members do not really see it as part of their job. Yes, our neighbors may have been a bit upset by the prospect of a bar, but that should not be surprising. We did not know that our impassioned pleas for help would cause us to lose a popularity contest among the board, and that our penalty would be to get a bar on our block. We thought CB6 would be interested in hearing why a bar at this location is a bad idea, but that was not the case. CB6 needs to look at itself in the mirror over the way it handled this issue, and the community in general should look at CB6. We ask everyone who cares about this neighborhood to join us in demanding that the board represent everyone, not just the bar owners.

Sincerely,
The members of the Hoyt Street Alliance