CB3 Denies Soho House a Liquor License at Proposed Lower East Side Branch
By Billy Gray May 29, 2013 3:30 pm
reprintsCommunity Board 3 last night voted to reject Soho House‘s application for a liquor license at 139 Ludlow Street, further imperiling the club’s fraught Lower East Side expansion plan. Last week, the State Liquor Authority Committee drafted a resolution to 86 Soho House’s booze application. Just 10 CB3 members voted against that measure, while 25 supported it and two members abstained.
Soho House, which began in London in 1995, currently has 11 clubs around the world, from West Hollywood to Berlin. The lone New York outpost opened a decade ago in the Meatpacking District at the height of that once-gritty neighborhood’s Sex and the City-abetted chicness. Club founder and CEO Nick Jones in March announced plans for a second New York branch on the slightly less gentrified Lower East Side.
Ludlow Street locals leery of the strip’s rapid transformation into a trendy shopping and nightlife destination immediately lashed out against the proposal. Mr. Jones wrote a letter to would-be neighbors that attempted to assuage their fears and invited naysayers to open house at the semi-private club that caters to a vaguely creative membership. At last night’s meeting, Soho House member and advocate Jill Linton went so far as to tell the assembly that “we are not drunks” while countering comparisons to Ludlow Street’s increasingly fratty barhoppers. Soho House will now take its case for a liquor license to the SLA.
The Lo-Down reports that a movement has started to landmark the facade of 139 Ludlow Street.
