By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
SOHO — The former location of the notorious nightspot The Falls will get a celebrity makeover from chef Michael White unless some SoHo residents get their way.
White’s restaurant group, called Altamarea Group LLC — which owns Alto and Convivio restaurants — plans to open a 1,800-square-foot Italian restaurant with a bar at 218 Lafayette St.
But restaurant reps, who had appeared before Community Board 2 to gain favor on its liquor license submission, might get more than they bargained for in taking over the lease where the controversial hotspot once stood.
Graduate student Imette St. Guillen was abducted from The Falls on Lafayette Street by bouncer Darryl Littlejohn four years ago before being brutally raped and murdered.
The board voted on Thursday to recommend denial of the liquor license unless it met a strict series of criteria — namely that it operates precisely as a restaurant, shuts down by 1 a.m., has no live music and no sidewalk seating — following an outcry from neighbors.
Locals have been badly burned by business at 218 Lafayette St. in the past.
The Falls was shut down in 2006, and residents complained the bar was a regular source of fights and loud music.
Midnight Café, which inherited the lease, wasn’t much better, residents said, adding that it lured bad behavior to SoHo streets in an area already rife with nightspots.
“My fear is that it will join Cafe Select at 212 Lafayette, La Esquina at 114 Kenmare, and Kenmare at 98 Kenmare, and, for that matter, Travertine at 19 Kenmare,” said longtime SoHo local Georgette Fleischer.
“In a nightspot-hopping area that leaves residents like me awakened at two, three, four in the morning when these drunk and drugged-out fleets move fabulously from one hotspot to the next.”
White was rated by Zagat as one of the hottest chef’s of 2010 for his new restaurant, Marea, on Central Park South. Neither his publicist nor restaurant staff returned calls for comment.
The State Liquor License is expected to render a decision on the license in the upcoming months.
