Bar Owner Who Skipped Hearing on Liquor License Gets Thumbs Down From CB8...But It May Not Matter

Another year of Community Board 8 meetings is in the books, as the full board convened on Dec. 18 to summarize what its various subcommittees have been up to this month. It was relatively drama-free, with the exception of a 2nd Ave. bar being on the losing end of a “motion of disapproval.”

That committee followed other subcommittee reports. While the Street Life Committee had approved nine out of 10 applicants–whether for new liquor licenses or sidewalk cafés–at a Dec. 3 meeting, a representative from the bar Lucille’s had not appeared to describe an alteration of their preexisting liquor license.

This no-show led to one unanimous motion of disapproval, which the full board has now confirmed with an unanimous disapproving motion of their own (note: community board votes are non-binding, meaning they merely serves as recommendations to city or state agencies that provide ultimate approval).

The applicants in question, Alexander Pfaffenbach and his wife Brett O’Brien, have historically co-owned the 415 Second Avenue bar. However, they are now notifying the State Liquor Authority (SLA) of Pfaffenbach’s purchase of “100 percent” of his wife’s ownership interest.

The application specifically requested that CB8 “waive any comment” on this corporate change due to nothing else about the bar, seemingly foreshadowing Pfaffenbach and O’Brien’s failure to appear.

Reached for comment by Our Town, Pfaffenbach bluntly predicted that the board’s “motion of disapproval” would be all but disregarded by the SLA. His wife Brett had transferred her ownership shares to him “to avoid a conflict with work,” he said, before adding that “I don’t need the community board’s approval to do that...the State Liquor Authority won’t even look at their recommendation. My attorney told me that I should ignore it.”

Elsewhere, more consequential matters were discussed. Community Board 8’s “Task Force for Residential Rezoning” presented a year-and-half of study on how to rezone the Upper East Side to boost the neighborhood’s affordable housing supply. Russell Squire created the task force in 2023, co-chair Elisabeth Rose explained, to make recommendations to the City Planning Commission on rezoning that could trigger “mandatory inclusionary housing” (MIH) requirements.

“The ‘City of Yes’ has no MIH, it only has optional affordability,” Rose added. Adam Wald, her co-chair, noted that the “M14” zoning type was one that dominated the blocks the task force has examined. He said that incentivizes the construction of storage buildings, life-sciences developments, commercial office buildings, warehouses, parking garages, and the occasional school; what it doesn’t provide for are “residential uses” or “height limits.”

The task force decided that the best zones would be ones that create 25,000 sq. ft or more of residential space, in order to trigger the MIH requirements. “We’re not trying to downzone here,” Rose said, nor create “luxury-only” developments. They also want to “minimize the incentive to redevelop existing housing,” create shorter buildings at mid-block points via “contextual zoning,” creating buildings that “mirror” each other, and maintain existing mixed-use–or a mix of commercial and residential–buildings.

Rose concluded by giving the full board a month to review the task force’s findings. After a vote in the new year, she said, the task force would “hopefully take” their recommendations to City Planning. She also pointed out that there were “people on the committee pushing for more and bigger, and there were people...who would really prefer less and smaller. Throughout this process, we had some really good give and take, and push and pull.”

The Landmarks Committee also gave a generally smooth presentation on four applications they reviewed in December. The first one, an application to provide ADA-compliant basement access to a French Neoclassical building at 1 East 78th Street, got unanimous approval from the full board (note: board approval is non-binding, and merely serves as a recommendation to city agencies that provide ultimate approval).

The second, which involves replacing an awning and legalizing an AC unit at 1312 Madison Avenue in Carnegie Hill, received overwhelming approval. So did the third application, which would provide everything from a façade restoration to “rear yard additions” for 694 & 696 Madison Avenue, a Neo-Grec landmark.

The final and fourth application involved 41-43 East 70th Street, a 1920s-era building designed in the “Regency Revival” style. It received unanimous board approval, and would involve: “the restoration of and alterations to 43 East 70th Street front and rear facades, new windows & exterior doors, addition of a rooftop stair and elevator bulkheads, and connection to 41 East 70th Street through new openings in the party wall.”