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Neighbors Fight Plans for New East Village Bar

By Patrick Hedlund | April 7, 2011 7:10am | Updated on April 7, 2011 9:28am
The East Fifth Street Block Association created a flier to encourage neighbors to oppose the establishment at an upcoming community board meeting.
The East Fifth Street Block Association created a flier to encourage neighbors to oppose the establishment at an upcoming community board meeting.
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By Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo News Editor

EAST VILLAGE — Just call them the plywood patrol.

A group of neighbors upset about noise produced by East Village bars has preemptively come out against a proposed pub that recently unveiled plans to open on Second Avenue.

The East Fifth Street Block Association — which helped lead the charge against the controversial, now closed nightclub Sin Sin — recently met with the new tenant of the boarded-up former restaurant space slated to reopen as an Irish pub at the corner of East 5th Street.

Concerned over the operator's intention to serve booze until 2 a.m. on weekdays and 4 a.m. at weekends, the group immediately went on the offensive, telling neighbors to protest the establishment's bid to secure a liquor license at a community board meeting next week.

Neighbors are opposing a plan to open a bar in the former restaurant at the corner of Second Avenue and East 5th Street.
Neighbors are opposing a plan to open a bar in the former restaurant at the corner of Second Avenue and East 5th Street.
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DNAinfo/Patrick Hedlund

"The East Fifth Street Block Association suggested a compromise of 12 a.m. kitchen closing with a 1 a.m. shut-down time, with the caveat that should the operation prove to be an exemplary neighbor, we might consider not opposing extended hours at a later time," the group wrote in an email, noting the bar will be called Coopers.

"We have not heard from the operator and assume that he is proceeding with his application without any signed stipulations with his neighbors. The East Fifth Street Block Association believes that the area is already overburdened with bars, and that we will not have another one on our corner."

The note encouraged opponents to show up en masse at the April 11 meeting of Community Board 3's liquor license committee to help "send the new operator packing" or get him to agree to an earlier closing time.

"The people have been pushed to their limit when it comes to bars," said Stuart Zamsky, a leader of the block association who both lives and runs a business on East 5th Street, near the proposed pub.

"We'll do anything to fight a place that's coming in to operate as a bar."

According to records on file with the community board, the space will have a 21-foot-long bar, 15 tables with seating for 47 people, an enclosed sidewalk café, three televisions and only background music.

The pub's owner Thomas O'Byrne — who also runs Dempsey's just down the street and Slàinte on the Bowery — did not immediately respond to a request for comment.