Two Booze Bids, Two Different Outcomes

An Upper State Street coffee shop’s quest for a tavern license will move forward, while a proposed City Point restaurant’s application for a full liquor license will not.

The Board of Zoning Appeals voted Tuesday night to allow The Coffee Pedaler a special exception for a tavern license to serve beer and wine and allow the 605 East St. establishment to stay open as late as 11:30 p.m. like other nearby bars and restaurants. The business also was granted parking relief that allows it to provide zero parking spaces where seven are required.

But board members, citing the opposition of neighbors, denied a use variance that would have permitted a 44-seat restaurant at 151 Howard Ave. The restaurant also would have needed a special exception for a restaurant liquor license that would have allowed it to serve alcohol until 11 p.m., and it needed parking relief that would have allowed no onsite parking instead of the 10 required spaces.

The changes were sought by Joshua Santana, who wanted to open an affordable Puerto Rican restaurant with a full liquor license on the first floor of a five-unit apartment building. He operated a laundromat there for seven years; he has since expanded the laundromat and moved it down the street.

He needed the variance from the zoning board to operate a restaurant within a residential zone, a tougher ask than a special exception requiring proof that the zoning regulations don’t square with the site and that the proposed use won’t impair the neighborhood character. He had to prove that there was a hardship and that no other business would work in the space, which Deputy Zoning Director Tom Talbot noted would not be true since a laundromat had been run successfully there for years.