Taurus Cafe Plan Comes Under Fire

Larry Livingston may have to win over his Newhallville neighbors before he can win permission to buy a vacant city lot next to his Taurus Cafe.

His latest attempt didn’t go over well.

That attempt came this week, when Livingston showed up at a Newhallville Community Management Team meeting at Lincoln-Bassett School.

Neighbors have complained for years about crime associated with Livingston’s bar. The city tried, unsuccessfully, to shut it down. The state yanked Livingston’s license in 2007, but he was able to reopen.

But Livingston needed to show up because the city’s neighborhoods agency, the Livable City Initiative (LCI), told him that’s part of the process of buying a vacant city lot.

Livingston approached LCI with a request to buy the long vacant lot made up of two land parcels at 506 – 508 and 512 – 514 Winchester Ave. that used to have houses. Livingston wants to turn the properties into a 24-space parking lot.

“He has petitions” backing the idea, LCI Executive Director Serena Sanjurjo-Neal said. ​“That’s nice. We have a process. We have to follow that process. We are not changing that.”

That process involves Livingston submitting a formal proposal, which LCI’s board and the Board of Alders would have to approve. One factor would be the neighborhood reaction, said Neal-Sanjurjo, who said that in her first seven months on the job she has ​“gotten many complaints about the Taurus.”

“They live there,” Neal-Sanjurjo said of management team members. ​“They have a say in what happens.”

Based on the ​“say” expressed at Tuesday night’s meeting at Lincoln-Bassett, Livingston has work to do to convince neighbors to support his purchase of the lot.

Neighbors peppered him with questions about how he would keep the area safe and quiet. Livingston mostly kept quiet at the meeting, preferring to let one of his patrons and a member of his Winchester Avenue bar’s ​“security team” do the talking.

Management team co-chair Jeanette Sykes said the attendees didn’t come to hear from them.

“The questions are being directed to Larry because people want to hear from the owner,” she said. She said that the management team would use feedback from residents to inform a recommendation that it will make on whether or not to support the parking lot. Taurus Cafe patrons currently park on the street.

Livingston had plenty to say in an interview at his bar Thursday.

He said nobody cared about the property until he took an interest in buying it. ​“Why doesn’t anyone say anything about those ugly jersey barriers that have been there for years?” he asked. ​“Those people would protest anything that I do.”

Livingston pointed out that the same happened when he attempted to purchase what was then a vacant lot at 526 Winchester Ave. with hopes of putting a parking lot there.

“They want him to be the cop,” Taurus patron Gene Hart said. ​“He can control what’s going on in the cafe, but he can’t police what happens on the public street. Only the police can do that.”

Livingston said his plan calls for security lighting, security provided by the bar, extra duty police officers, and surveillance cameras to which police would be allowed to have access to at any time. The parking lot also would be available for use as off street parking during big snows.

“We don’t have that now,” he said of parking during snowstorms. ​“The city does a poor job of plowing the streets in the black community especially around here.”

“If I was white,” Livingston said, ​“I would not have this problem.”

Parking Lot Or Not?

The neighbors who stood up to oppose his proposal are black, as are the mayor and the LCI director.

State Sen. Gary Winfield lives just a few houses down from where the parking lot would be. He said at Tuesday’s meeting that such a lot outside a bar tends to attract people who loiter and also make noise. He said he wanted to hear from Livingston about what he planned to do to make sure that such activity didn’t happen. He also argued that a petition circulated in support of the parking lot was signed mostly by people who don’t live within 200 feet of the bar.

If Livingston is allowed to acquire the properties he would still have to go through the additional hoop of obtaining a variance that would allow him to transform them into a parking lot. The lots currently are zoned for residential use.

Newhallville Management Team Co-Chair Kenneth Cousar, who does not support the parking lot idea, claimed that some of the people who signed the petition used fraudulent addresses. A person named ​“Sean London” signed the petition claiming to live at 360 Shelton Ave.

“That’s my address,” Cousar said. ​“Nobody by that name lives at that address.”

Bar patron Darren Smith said Tuesday that on any given day the bar is not nearly as busy or rowdy as it was ten years ago. Virtually no noise comes from it even on its busiest day, which is Saturday, he argued.

“This establishment has been in the community for over 20 years, and this kind of scrutiny over a city lot is absurd,” he said. ​“This business should be allowed to have this parking lot. If you put houses there, other developers are going to come in and build the houses and we’re not going to benefit. At least if Larry is allowed to put in a parking lot people here will benefit from it.”

State Rep. Robyn Porter, who lives near Winchester Avenue and Division Street, begged to differ. She said the noise from the bar wakes her up regularly at 2 a.m. when it closes and people are leaving.

“When you’re on the dance floor you don’t hear the noise,” she said.

She said one night she witnessed a woman outside the bar ​“beaten out of her shoes. Her pocketbook was in my yard.” Porter called the cops. She said when the cops arrived they just drove by the bar. She said she often finds liquor bottles and other refuse in her yard.

“They come to be seen, not to do their jobs,” she said of the promises that extra-duty officers would somehow manage unruly patrons. ​“It’s not fair. People should not have to be subjected to your good time.”

Phillip Denby, who said he was a member of the bar’s security team, told the neighbors that the business isn’t responsible for what people do off its property. He said the Taurus can handle anything that happens inside the bar and in the bar’s parking lot. He also said that the bar works with the police and because of that violence is down.

Mostly ​“No”

Newhallville Alder Alfreda Edwards, of Ward 19, submitted a letter to the management team stating that her constituents have called to let her know that they do not support the parking lot. ​“Residents throughout the community stated that they would prefer to see a residential unit built on the lot, which would increase property value,” Edwards wrote.

“People at the meeting said they don’t want it and I stand with them,” said Newhalllville Alder Delphine Clyburn of Ward 20

Newhallville Alder Brenda Foskey-Cyrus, of Ward 21, backed Livingston and signed his petition. The business is in her ward.

“That property has been sitting there for years, and nobody has inquired about it,” she said when reached for comment Thursday. ​“I highly support putting a parking lot there. It’s time to do something with that property. He has inquired about it, and I feel he is entitled to it.”

Top Newhallville Cop Lt. Herb Sharp, who had to leave Tuesday’s meeting prior to the discussion of the parking lot proposal, said Wednesday that he isn’t in favor of the vacant lots being made into a parking lot.

“It is my opinion that if the city were to allow the owner to purchase that property to put in a parking lot, it would have to put stipulations about camera systems, lighting and security. However the owner, Larry Livingston, has not been very cooperative with the police department,” Sharp said in an interview Wednesday. ​“I am very skeptical that he would put those things in place.”

Sharp said his preference would be not to have a bar in the middle of a heavily residential neighborhood.

“In my opinion those types of bars are outdated in the community,” he said. ​“I don’t think we should have it in a community setting, because I think we have evolved as a society. Those types of business should be outside of our community, especially with their propensity for having a violent element coming in and out of the bar, which has been the case with the Taurus. That’s documented.”

Sharp said parking lots and bars are directly associated with more loitering and higher degrees of criminal activity such as gun violence.

Livingston said since he reopened the bar back in 2011, business has been down, and so has the violence in that part of the neighborhood. The Taurus Cafe also is now the only bar in the neighborhood; former rivals, the Oasis and 7 – 11, have all closed.

“Business is dead around here,” he said. ​“There’s been no need for me to hire police officers.”

When asked why he doesn’t just give up on the neighborhood, Livingston replied, ​“I’m not going to run.”

“I’m going to get a parking lot one way or another,” he said. When pressed about what ​“other way” there might be to obtain the property, he said, ​“maybe God will give it to me.”

Livingston said a bar has existed at the current home of the Taurus Cafe since 1898. ​“Nobody wants a bar in their neighborhood,” he reflected, ​“but the bar was here before I was here.”