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Fate of East Village Bar Sin Sin/Leopard Lounge to be Discussed Tonight

An interior shot of Sin Sin/Leopard Lounge on Second Avenue in the East Village.
An interior shot of Sin Sin/Leopard Lounge on Second Avenue in the East Village.
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leopardloungenyc.com

By Patrick Hedlund

DNAinfo News Editor

EAST VILLAGE — A nightlife operator is trying to move from donuts to disco balls on Second Avenue.

The new owners of the troubled nightspot Sin Sin and the Leopard Lounge will find out Tuesday if their experience owning a handful of Dunkin’ Donuts franchises is enough to garner the community board's blessing in taking over a nightclub with a bad reputation among neighbors.

The owners recently came before Community Board 3’s liquor license committee in search of license transfer from the previous owner, but ran into rabid opposition from neighbors who charged the bar with a host of quality-of-life disturbances.

The police were called to the bar three times over the last year following complaints of marijuana use and prostitution, but all were unfounded, according to the NYPD.

Still, the city’s 311 hotline has received at least 72 complaints about the bar since the start of 2009, the CB 3 committee said.

The committee ultimately voted to reject the application, which will be voted on by the full board Tuesday night.

In addition to neighbors' complaints, the committee took even greater issue with the fact that the owners’ experience was limited to operating franchises of the fast-food coffee chain — experience they said doesn’t translate to operating a bar with such a negative history.

“The jump from that kind of food business into the nightlife business, it’s a really big leap,” said CB 3 chairman Dominic Pisciotta, who spoke against the application at the committee meeting.

“In this case, it just looked like the residents’ needs were so out of whack compared to what these new owners were offering,” added Pisciotta, explaining that the new owners planned to retain the bar’s current management and that the proposal didn’t include a change in security to address residents’ concerns over noise and drug use stemming from the club.

“There was nothing different [in their plan] that could resolve the concerns of the residents to really justify allowing the transfer.”

However, Pisciotta did say that the Sin Sin/Leopard Lounge has not weathered a disproportionate amount of complaints compared to other problem nightspots in the district.