Will New Rochelle City Council Approve This Cabaret?

On September 19, 2012, the New Rochelle City Council will vote on whether to grant the Sieto Ocho Sieto restaurant’s application for a permit to operate a cabaret at its location on Pelham Road in the Food Town Shopping Center. The restaurant is located directly across the street from Willow Towers, an assisted living facility for seniors, and the United Hebrew Old Age Home. The permit would allow the restaurant to host up to 250 people with music and dancing as well as bar service into the wee hours of the night. Although the restaurant must comply with noise regulations and any negative impacts within 500 feet, the owners have been blatantly flaunting the law by operating as a cabaret without the necessary permit and not following valet parking rules. A public hearing was set only after the owners paid fines of $900 to the City for the violations. However, the fines were/are nominal and can be easily recouped in one night. The fines are not a sufficient deterrent for the restaurant to operate within the law.
The owners of the restaurant feel the cabaret should not have a negative impact on the neighborhood and businesses. They claim to have security and promise to keep noise levels within the City’s decibel limit. However, Elaine Waltz, President of the South End Civic League. said the City does not have sufficient staff and legal council to follow up on complaints. She said she is getting many complaints from residents in the area. Ms. Waltz felt the restaurant’s request for a cabaret license should be denied. To illustrate: she was driving on Pelham Road by the restaurant on Saturday August ll, 2012 around “5:00 p.m. when a car darted out of the parking lot in front of the street. This is a very dangerous situation created by a valet from the restaurant. The parking lot in front of the restaurant was filling up with cars, creating a problem for the patrons of the rest of the businesses in the shopping center. I went by the restaurant on the same date at 11:30 p.m. where I witnessed people congregating in front of the grocery store, Food Town, near the Pelham Road side of the parking lot. They were smoking and speaking very loudly. I was able to hear their conversations with my windows up and the air conditioner on in the car. They were opposite of and adjacent to the residential area on Meadow Lane, Shady Glen, Icard Road, and Pelham Road.

Joyce Furfero, Co-Chair of the Confederation of Neighborhood Associations, stated that this restaurant is in a residential neighborhood and would have music and dancing until 2 p.m. on Friday and Saturday evenings and possibly during the week (Tuesday night was suggested). She is concerned that not enough residents about the public hearing, because the owners must notify only property owners within 250 feet of the restaurant and those more than 250 feet away, but well within the negative impact zone, such as the residents on Shady Glen and those just north of the shopping center and homeowners down Meadow Lane, will not be notified. Her conversations with residents reveal that even those living more than the 500 feet beyond the restaurant hear the noise. The people with whom she spoke were especially concerned about noise, drugs, parking, appearance (all the smokers come outside the restaurant, etc.), people wandering into their lawns and docks, and lowered property values. Ms. Furfero added, “Like with the delis on North Avenue near Iona, at some point, the families just want the noise to die down, the lights to go out, and to get a good night’s sleep. With a cabaret in their back yards, they will not be able to do this. Moreover, the owners of Sieto Ocho Sieto appear to have no conscience. They have simply ignored the fact that the restaurant (and would-be cabaret) is directly across the street from senor living facilities and an old age home. What are they thinking?”
One resident in the neighborhood who did not want to be identified stated that “now most of the surrounding neighborhoods don’t want the cabaret at all and we don’t need it. We first thought we could compromise but after last winter we saw how difficult the problems had become and no matter who we called, including the police, nothing improved.’

In 4he September 14, 2012 issue of Soundview Rising

Update: Because the notices to residents in the area were not sent out, there will be an extension of this hearing at the October City Council meeting.
Only residents who did not speak at the hearing in September will be allowed to speak.