By Jon Schuppe, Yepoka Yeebo and Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporters/Producers
MANHATTAN — The embattled SoHo club Greenhouse could have its liquor license yanked in connection with a 2009 assault on a patron and its use of unlicensed security guards, according to State Liquor Authority documents.
And the club could come under more scrutiny because of an early-morning incident last Sunday, when Jason Green, a would-be patron who had been denied entry, was shot and killed on the street near the club by a unknown gunman.
The assault case stems from an attack on March 17, 2009, when a patron smashed a bottle across the face of a man waiting for the bathroom, cutting him.
Police referred the incident to the SLA after finding that bar staff didn’t call authorities and didn’t call for an ambulance for the 24-year-old victim, SLA spokesman Michael Smith said. Police also told the SLA that evidence had been removed from the scene.
The pending state charges are part of a long record of complaints about the bar, which opened in 2008.
The SLA charged the bar, which bills itself as environmentally friendly, with allowing the 2009 assault to take place, "suppressing evidence of criminal activity" and "failure to provide medical assistance to an assault victim," according to SLA documents.
The SLA has also charged Greenhouse with using unlicensed security guards in March of this year, a separate matter that was also referred to the authority by the NYPD.
Both cases will go before an administrative law judge, and the agency will then decide the bar’s fate. The bar’s owners have pleaded not guilty, Smith said.
A Greenhouse spokesman said the owners declined to comment.
In October 2009, black patrons who were turned away from the club filed a lawsuit alleging racial discrimination, which the owners denied. Around that time, there was a stabbing inside the club. Neighbors have been complaining about noise and unruly crowds, and at a recent 1st Precinct Community Council meeting, police officials promised to keep an eye on the club.
That record of trouble came into sharper focus after Green’s death last weekend.
Green, a city Emergency Medical Technician, was killed at about 5 a.m. Sunday a block away from the club after he and a friend had reportedly been denied entry for not being properly dressed. The pair then got into a fight with several other people outside. Soon after, a man stepped from a car and shot Green in the face, according to police.
Green had been suspended from the FDNY earlier this year after he and an EMT co-worker allegedly ignored the pleas of a dying pregnant woman while they were on a break in Brooklyn. Sunday’s attack prompted speculation that Green was killed in retaliation for that incident, but police said the events did not appear to be connected.
A Greenhouse spokesman told the Daily News that none of the people involved in the fight were patrons at the club.
Capt. Edward Winski, commanding officer of the 1st Precinct, said he didn’t consider Greenhouse a problem club but that large crowds often assembled there, requiring police to visit regularly.
"We try to keep a close watch on it," Winski said.
He said officers had visited Greenhouse earlier in the night of Green’s killing. "Unfortunately we weren't there" at the time of the shooting, the police captain said.
In the days after Green's death, well-wishers streamed in and out of his mother’s apartment in Long Island City. Relatives refused to speak about the killing.
