BUSHWICK — The neighborhood community board has a new rule for aspiring bar owners — three strikes and you're down.
Would-be bar and restaurant operators applying for liquor licenses are asked to appear before Community Board 4 to talk about their establishments, but many have been skipping the meetings altogether, board members said at meetings this month.
Now, if owners fail to show up after being invited three times, their request will be put at the bottom of a lengthy list of wannabe drink slingers, said Barbara Smith, chairperson of CB4's public safety committee.
"We can’t keep inviting people to come out, and then they don’t appear," she said at a community board meeting Wednesday. "If they don’t appear three times, then you’re getting put on the bottom of the list. And the list is very, very long."
The committee looks at handful of liquor license requests each month to discuss whether to grant their approval, a decision that’s advisory to the State Liquor Authority.
While SLA does not require the board's OK in making its final decision, the authority does place "substantial weight" on its recommendations, according to a statement from the SLA.
New bars and restaurants are legally required to notify the community board of their requests at least 30 days before applying for a liquor license.
A delay at the community board level would particularly impact businesses sitting within 500 feet of three other existing liquor licenses.
Those applications cannot legally be approved unless the SLA finds the license would be in the public interest — meaning they're required to have a public hearing and get a vote from the community board, according to the SLA.
At September’s liquor license committee meeting, six businesses were invited to talk about their requests, but only two showed up.
Reps for one of the absent businesses, a bar at 143 Troutman St., had already been a no-show at a meeting before without communicating to the board, CB4 District Manager Nadine Whitted said.
Under the new guidelines, the operators will be invited one more time before the board relegates them to the bottom of the list, meaning they may not get any support from the board for months.
"We don’t have time," Whitted said. "It’s not fair to call them again and again, and they don’t show up."
A representative for the bar could not be reached for comment.
