Approximately 15 people attended a City Council hearing at Boston City Hall on Tuesday to discuss the addition of liquor licenses to local Boston restaurants.
City councilors Frank Baker and Bill Linehan proposed the initiative, which would issue three more liquor licenses to restaurants being built in a mall on the corner of Boston Street and Massachusetts Avenue.
City Councilor Annissa Essaibi-George posed multiple questions about the benefit of these licenses and how many of the establishments would be national chains.
“What do you think the mix will be between national anchor and these JR anchors?” Essaibi-George inquired. “What do you think the mix will be? I’m a big proponent of local businesses, locally owned, folks that only have enough for store funds. What do you think the mix will be with those locals?”
Keith Davidson and Brad Dumont, both from EDENS, a real estate developer company, said they are planning a residential, retail and hotel expansion on a 10-acre plot of land recently purchased by their company in the area.
“Ground floor is retail, good mix of retail, restaurants. Restaurants are the focus … We are focusing on our curbs, widening the sidewalk, adding benches,” Dumont said during the meeting.
Dumont said the need to adapt to the changing retail market led EDENS to work for hours figuring out how to strategically place the restaurants.
“Food is the real anchor for people to want to come and spend their time here,” Dumont said during the meeting.
WS Development Vice President Yanni Tsipis said adding licenses to local restaurants would offer diversity to the business landscape.
“We’re trying to build a neighborhood,” Tsipis said during the meeting. “The key to the answer is that we want a variety of different tenants.”
Tsipis said the compound that WS Development is planning with EDENS would bring a mix of national and local businesses to Boston.
“On the first floor alone were talking around 24 store fronts,” Tsipis said during the meeting. “It’ll be a mix of restaurants, of course that will depend on the availability of the licenses.”
The cost to buy these liquor licenses on the open market, as asked by Linehan, is estimated at $400,000, according to Tsipis.
Dumont said 450 permanent jobs would be created aside from construction, which would employ 1,400 people. Without the licenses, he said, the property would have more national chains, “which is what we want to avoid.”
Such condition, Pressley said, would put bring inequality among neighborhoods and that “they can’t really meet the demand of the market without these licenses.”
Several people who spoke during the hearing, spoke to The Daily Free Press after the conclusion of the meeting, and said having the state pay for liquor license fees would ease the starting of restaurants.
Karen Simao, a lawyer from Fort Point, said requiring restaurants to pay a $400,000 license fee would be too costly.
“Councilors are really trying to find some creative solutions to help the rest industry; we deal with this every day,” said Simao, 42. “If you add $400,000 onto that, that’s a significant change in budget.”
Simao’s co-worker, Stephen Miller, 70, of Chestnut Hill, said liquor licenses provided by the state would be beneficial to the Greater Boston community.
“I’m working for the best interest of the industry,” he said. “More restaurants, more licenses.”
Dumont, a developer for the South Bay Town Center Project as a member of EDENS, said he wants to help local restaurants thrive, and that he attained sizable support from councilors.
“We’re seeing an increasing price per going out to the open market to buy liquor licenses, making it very difficult for smaller, independent businesses,” said Dumont, 35, of Charlestown.
