Residents look to stop proposed Tribeca cocktail lounge
Tribeca residents have asked a judge to turn out the lights on plans for a Church Street cocktail lounge, even as they suffer through alleged late-night parties already happening on the building’s ground floor.
The lounge, L’Entree, has yet to open, but that hasn’t stopped the raging parties at 293 Church St., residents claim in a new lawsuit.
“This nightclub is just the wrong business in the wrong place,” said Steven Rand, the executive director of an art gallery next door who filed the suit along with his “significant other” Nancy Wender in Manhattan Supreme Court.
“It’s a place for 20- and 30-year-olds that come into Manhattan … serving only alcohol and opening at 10 p.m. and closing at 2 a.m. is really not the vibe in Tribeca,” Rand said. “If it were a restaurant, people would eat and be quiet. Here, people are just there to party and they go outside to smoke and they loiter.”
Thirty-six neighbors from 11 buildings surrounding the five-story building — which contains four apartments and the commercial ground floor — have signed a petition opposing the club, according to the court papers.
“Large crowds congregate outside the location,” while pie-eyed partygoers “stumble and fall on the sidewalk and emergency services are called on a regular basis,” according to the Nov. 4 filing seeking unspecified monetary damages and a permanent injunction requiring the defendants to “abate these nuisance conditions.”
The complaint charges that the joint has been jumping since “at least late August” and operates “well into the early morning, blaring music during all hours.”
On Oct. 30, a Saturday night, the “club” hosted an “excessively noisy” party of nearly 130 people that lasted into the late evening, the suit alleges.
“The people who are leasing the first floor are throwing the parties,” Rand said, referring to one of the named defendants, Zak Normandin.
“Halloween weekend was the worst. There were strobe lights. Loud, thumping bass. Music that would make your windows shake,” fumed a 49-year-old White Street resident, whose building is adjacent to the lounge and declined to give his name for fear of reprisal. “It’s a residential neighborhood.”
Rand filed the suit five days later.
Rand alleges the proprietors — 293 Church Owners LLC, Church Tribeca LLC, Michael Barrett and Normandin — are “willing to say they’ll do anything” to obtain a liquor license and he fears once they have it, they can ask the State Liquor Authority to extend the hours and days. Barrett and Normandin did not immediately return messages.
The State Liquor Authority told The Post on Friday that there is no application on file.
Not everyone is a partypooper though.
“Is it noisy sometimes?” snarked one neighboring business owner who didn’t want to get caught in the cross-hairs. “Yeah of course. But this is New York City. If you don’t want noise, then move somewhere else.”
Additional reporting by Kieran Ungemach
