OCEAN CITY — The owner of the Tap House restaurants received approval for a liquor license at a proposed Boardwalk location at this week’s Board of License Commissioners (BLC) meeting.
The application met with protest from neighboring residents and business owners, however, and will tentatively die in three months if permission for the new location hasn’t been secured from Ocean City by that time.
The new Tap House is set to be located at 407 N. Atlantic Avenue, or the Boardwalk, in Ocean City. Owner Avi Sibony currently also has the Tap House on the Bay Bar and Grille on 45th Street and the 9th Street Tap House Bar and Grille just off the Boardwalk. It’s an established restaurant and has reflected well on Ocean City, according to attorney Pete Cosby, who represented Sibony.
The plan now is to add the 4th Street Boardwalk location to fill a gap on that block, which Cosby referred to as a “restaurant desert.” The next nearest location is Hooters on 5th Street or Shenanigans at 3rd Street. There is also the Tidelands, a hotel bar that is not directly on the Boardwalk but in that block.
BLC Chair William Esham expressed some skepticism about that slice of the Boardwalk being a “restaurant desert.”
“So people are going to die of thirst?” he asked Cosby.
That scenario would be unlikely, but Cosby noted that there are areas of much higher bar or restaurant concentration in Ocean City and other cities. They function much like car dealerships, he said, with competitors grouped together to allow patrons to shop their options. A high concentration attracts a lot of customers for everyone, he continued, framing the scenario as a rising tide lifting all ships.
“If you have many restaurants of quality then people are going to know that they have a choice and they are going to want to go there and they’re going to eat,” said Cosby.
The number of liquor licenses in the Ocean City area has been basically the same for more than a decade, he added, and could use some growth.
Shenanigans owner Greg Shockley disagreed.
“There is no one that is coming to Ocean City this weekend, last weekend or last year that is saying, ‘Hey, we need more restaurants and bars on the Boardwalk,’” Shockley said.
Sales numbers have plateaued, he continued, and a greater concentration of restaurants on the Boardwalk around 4th Street wouldn’t attract more customers but would just slice the pie that much smaller in an already tough market.
“Where does it say … that we’re required to have a liquor license every block?” he asked.
Furthermore, Shockley didn’t feel that the Tap House was bringing any new menu to the location that Shenanigans or Hooters aren’t already covering, though he did acknowledge that Tap House brews its own beer.
Cosby disagreed that the restaurants were too similar to be in the same area and re-iterated his belief that there was plenty of room on the Boardwalk at 4th Street. However, the application faced further pushback from residents in the area, particularly those at the El Capitan condominium. The residents reported they were led to believe that the site was going to be used for retail at first, according to condominium association spokesman Buck Mann.
“[Sibony] assured us that it was going to be a retail store there,” said Mann. “Never, ever did they mention that it was going to be a bar or restaurant.”
Residents feared “noise, congestion, rowdiness, etc.,” according to Mann. The association’s Board of Directors and about half of the owners protested, with several in attendance and seven emails submitted against the Tap House’s application.
Mann also told Cosby that the reason liquor license numbers, and therefore bars and restaurants, appear static could be because the area has become over saturated.
Resident Brian McCarthy, who lives on Baltimore Avenue, also joined the condo owners in protesting the application, arguing that the roughly 172-seat restaurant would be too loud and crowded for the neighborhood. Parking was a universal concern, as the spot only has 23 lot spaces which Sibony had to install underground to qualify for a special exception from the resort town’s Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA).
Cosby was dismissive of the argument that the restaurant would be too loud for the Boardwalk.
“If you want peace and quiet, don’t live next to the economic engine. The Boardwalk is the economic engine … If you don’t like it, go somewhere that is quiet,” he said.
Cosby asked McCarthy what his vision was for the Boardwalk, which contains dozens of restaurants, bars and shops.
“Are you looking for peace and quiet or are you looking for excitement?” Cosby asked the room. “What are you looking for in Ocean City?”
The BLC granted Tap House a Class B alcoholic beverage license for the proposed 4th Street location with the caveat that there be no outside speakers, DJ or games. Also, though Sibony has received a special parking exception from Ocean City’s BZA, he has not yet received site plan approval or permits from the town. The board said Wednesday that if Tap House does not receive those within three months the license will expire.