Hired Guns Galore in Dispute Over Ad Studio Liquor License

Jeff Ehrlich (right), who mediated Community Board 1’s working group sessions with Spring Studios, talks to David Hemphill (left), Spring New York’s events director, and Bradford Sussman, Spring’s consultant. Photo by Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

It may be the most labor-intensive liquor license application in Lower Manhattan history.

Spring Studios, a British advertising agency and production house, is moving into its new 120,000-square-foot quarters at 50 Varick Street this fall. It will be hosting an estimated 300 client parties and other events there annually. Some events will be at night, on the 8,500-square-foot roof, with hundreds of guests—an unwelcome prospect for some worried residents within earshot distance.

But on April 10, after more than eight hours of Community Board 1 committee and working group meetings and nearly a dozen negotiating sessions with representatives of nearby buildings and their lawyers, CB1’s Tribeca Committee voted 6 to 2 to recommend that the State Liquor Authority grant the license.

It would take a hired acoustics consultant, traffic consultant, security consultant,
general consultant, liquor lawyer, 50 letters of support, and mind-numbing negotiations leading to a list of stipulations to make it happen.

(At one point, Spring Studios paraded a dozen young people from the Chinese-American Planning Council into the already packed committee room as evidence of their commitment to provide training opportunities to local youths.)

One by one, at that final meeting, the hired experts made their case.

• Benjamin Houghton, the acoustics expert, calculated that a 300-person party on Spring’s rooftop would be softer to 1 York Street residents (by two decibels) than the outdoor evening noise that they normally hear. The sound reduction will be helped, he said, by the proposed installation of a sound barrier.

• Frank Filiciotto of Sam Schwartz Engineering explained his plan to prevent backups on Varick Street when cars stop at Spring’s building for guests. This included designated zones for passenger drop-off and pickup, and workers hired to prevent double-parking or idling.

• Chuck Garelick of Elite Investigations promised around-the-clock security in and around the building.

Following the many negotiating sessions, Spring Studios agreed to a complicated set of limits on the number, times and sizes of indoor events. Here is just a sampling of what they came up with. In one year there can be up to 180 events with fewer than 200 people, 80 of which must end by 6 p.m. and 5 that can go on until midnight. Fifteen other events could have 600 to 800 people, but only four of them can go on until 11 p.m.

After much deliberation, the committee concluded that supporting Spring’s quest for a liquor license was the way to go—since, if a deal wasn’t struck, the stipulations would become moot.

“If we don’t vote in favor of an application with reasonable restrictions,” said committee co-chair Michael Connolly, “the applicant will get a liquor license anyway and will be able to operate without those restrictions.”

Spring’s general consultant, Bradford Sussman, said the firm’s commitment to
be a good neighbor rather than a “fly-by-night operation” is shown in its signing of a long-term lease for the facility.

“These are people who are going to be part of this neighborhood for the next quarter of a century,” he said.