Protection & License Committee — 2018-10-18
Attendance
Manisha Bewtra ; Robert A. Boisselle ; Scott M. Forbes ; Jennifer L. Lemmerman ; Kate Lipper-Garabedian ; Shawn M. MacMaster ; Monica C. Medeiros ; Peter D. Mortimer ; John N. Tramontozzi ; Francis X. Wright Jr. ; Michael P. Zwirko
Agenda
- Call to Order
- Public Comment
- Orders
- ORDER-2019-21 : Application by James Turner et. al, doing business as Rising Eagle Publick House, 503-509 Main St., Melrose for a Common Victualler License
- ORDER-2019-22 : Application of Jawad Danguir, d/b/a AYYA Transportation at 139 West Emerson St., Apt. 10 Melrose, MA for a Livery License
- Adjournment
Minutes
CITY OF MELROSE PROTECTION AND LICENSE COMMITTEE CALENDAR● OCTOBER 18, 2018 Aldermanic Chamber, Melrose City Hall Committee Meeting 7:30 PM 562 Main Street, Melrose, MA 02176 The public should take notice that the Melrose Board of Aldermen may, on certain occasions, have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the Board of Aldermen consisting of both voting and non-voting members. Members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee. Attendee Name Title Status Arrived John N. Tramontozzi Chair Present Monica C. Medeiros Vice Chair Present Peter D. Mortimer Ward 6 Alderman Present Robert A. Boisselle Ward 4 Alderman Present Shawn M. MacMaster Ward 5 Alderman Present Michael P. Zwirko President/ Ex-officio Member Absent Francis X. Wright Jr. Nonvoting Member Absent Scott M. Forbes Nonvoting Member Absent Jennifer L. Lemmerman Nonvoting Member Absent Manisha Bewtra Nonvoting Member Present Kate Lipper-Garabedian Nonvoting Member Absent
ORDER-2019-21 License - Common Victualler Application by James Turner et. al, doing business as Rising Eagle Publick House, 503-509 Main St., Melrose for a Common Victualler License Recommend Passage
ORDER-2019-22 License - Hackney License Application of Jawad Danguir, d/b/a AYYA Transportation at 139 West Emerson St., Apt. 10 Melrose, MA for a Livery License Recommend Passage City of Melrose Page 1 Updated 10/18/2018 8:58 PM
Transcript
▶ 0:00 John N. Tramontozzi: Good evening. Today is Thursday, October 18th, 2018. This is the City of Melrose Board of Aldermen Protection and License Committee meeting this evening. As an introduction, my name is John Tramontozzi. I'm the chair of this committee and with us this evening is Vice Chair Alderman Monica Medeiros, also alderman peter mortimer alderman robert Boisselle and alderman Shawn mcmaster voting members our non-voting members this evening with us is also alderman manisha bhutra good evening everybody this meeting is being recorded pursuant to the massachusetts open meeting law and is available for future viewing on mmtv and on our website motion to open the floor for public comment mr chairman second thank you we do have a motion to open the floor for public comment by alderman
▶ 0:57 John N. Tramontozzi: mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle on the motion all in favor aye any opposing none this is the opportunity for any member of the public uh who wish to come forward to talk about um any of the orders on the agenda this evening there's two orders uh if anybody in the public wish to come forward please do so now and uh seeing no members of the closed public comment second thank you we we have a motion to close public comment by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle all in favor aye any opposed seeing none uh public comment this evening is now closed uh we do have two orders on the agenda this evening and i will read those orders for us uh order uh 2019-21 it's the application by james turner at all uh doing business as rising eagle
▶ 1:43 John N. Tramontozzi: public house at 503 to 509 main street murrows for a common victor license motion to suspend the rules that we may hear from the applicant second thank you we have a motion to suspend the rules by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle on the motion all in favor aye aye any opposing none so this is uh we're under suspension of rules and if the applicants can step forward um thank you uh good evening and if you could introduce yourself uh and um good evening i am james turner um proprietor to be of a rising eagle do you have a couple uh maybe you might want to um introduce yourself to introduce what your plans are and uh give you an opportunity to talk up the restaurant so i think as most people know here um
▶ 2:30 we are the owners of turner's seafoods um across the street from 503 to 509 and I've been there for 25 years but five months ago the owner of Stearns and Hilt approached us and said he was selling the building and selling the business and was interested if we would be interested in purchasing the the business and property and we were very much so because we do not own our the building on on Turner's so we were very much interested in doing in in doing that our idea or concept is to open a we really felt that Melrose because of the fact that it had no liquor for a long time it lacked any kind of a local pub tavern public house and so our belief is that a it's it's something that the market needs and we are thrilled to be able to try to fill that this is in
▶ 3:38 looking at what type of a tavern a pub public house we were going to open we thought about you know as an English and Irish and we decided neither it should be a Melrose public house and so we did some research and found that Melrose which used to be called Pond Field has a very rich history in the American Revolution and so there was actually a the local tavern for Malden town because Melrose and Malden were one then was actually called Hills Tavern and then Kettles Tavern but was known as the look to the locals as the Rising Eagle and that is the name of the business that we've chosen well thank you I appreciate that before we ask for our questions I just wanted to mention that later this
▶ 4:27 John N. Tramontozzi: late this evening we received a um a communication from uh mr paul johnson who's the uh inspector of the the city um so just so we have some clarification so i understand we're going to be if this were to be approved the common vict license um you're going to open up the second floor which has a separate entrance and that is ready for occupancy but there are still needed work to be done in the first floor which will not be occupied until later can you explain what that is correct yes the second floor is is finished we're not really doing any renovations to it other than maybe a little bit of painting or there's some large curtains that separate the mumps upstairs we're taking those down it'll
▶ 5:10 actually act as a function space it as you state it already has a separate entrance that's isolates it from the from the first floors space and so we'll be using that entrance to access the second floor but we will be doing renovations on the first floor converting that over to be more of an American Revolutionary Public House so we'll be doing that I think the projected opening for the Rising Eagle downstairs will be somewhere between you know February March is the best projection we can give so but while we're doing that we would like to be able to host um the you know functions on the second floor very good and uh so i will uh put that as part of the order uh that communication from mr johnson
▶ 6:02 Peter D. Mortimer: um and um if we have any questions from the committee i think uh alderman mortimer has a question uh thank you very much uh more of a comment actually mr chairman i'd like to thank Thank you and your family for many years of good work to Melrose, one of the anchor restaurants. Very, very attractive everywhere you go. You hear people mention Turner's and what a great restaurant it is. And we're very, very happy that you're taking over another restaurant right across the street. I'm sure your customary good service and Warm atmosphere and responsible environment will continue. It's great stuff. It's in Ward 6, that's the ward that I represent, the downtown business area. I'm a member of the Chamber of Commerce.
▶ 6:52 Peter D. Mortimer: So we're very happy that you're taking over this endeavor as we try all the time to make sure that our downtown remains vibrant. Right now we are in the middle of a few construction projects downtown, which have been lingering. And we're trying to move those along with all due speed, and we're glad to see that you are stepping right up. So this storefront, this business will hardly skip a beat. Then it will keep moving right along, a very tiny delay, but not much that the doors will be back open and the place will be in business. those comments i will uh make a motion to recommend this order for passage mr so we have a motion to recommend recommend the order for passage made by alderman mortimer seconded by
▶ 7:41 Monica C. Medeiros: alderman Boisselle on further discussion alderman medeiros thank you i want to echo a lot of the same comments as alderman mortimer and you know especially we really appreciate having you downtown and the responsibility that you've taken in handling things and as you know melrose has had you know what didn't have liquor for a long time and you know you definitely do it in a responsible fashion as as was said and you know we do really appreciate it and you know in fact you know really you can take a lot of responsibility i think for the success of downtown because you know 25 years or so ago there was not much downtown and thank you everywhere i go people don't always know Melrose and they don't always know what's there but they know Turner's thank
▶ 8:30 Monica C. Medeiros: you well there's no place like Melrose believe me and you know as we're going through some changes downtown and we have some building and some constructions and some you know different turnovers some of the longtime businesses I think you'll be at a perfect time to come in with this new establishment and I love the patriotic theme of rising eagle and I happen to to see the, it's really Phineas Sprague's public house doing business as Rising Eagle. Would you like to talk about the Phineas Sprague? Sure. Well, one of the great patriots that we first did our research was Phineas Sprague. But I think further researching it, we decided that the Rising Eagle was the better, more appropriate choice.
▶ 9:23 we actually had our first our design meeting today we're using the same designer that we used to do Turner's and I believe me I can't wait for you guys to see it it's gonna be spectacular it's just it's really really classy and it's it's very Melrose Ian put it that way and we should go over some of the the nitty-gritty of could you tell us about your anticipated hours and I see that you think you might have about 40 employees could you maybe talk a little bit about parking and you know everybody sure well you know the one of the the public house I guess we have to talk about that so public houses is different than a little bit about a traditional tavern that we think of here at the United States I'm not sure if you've any of you have been to England but they
▶ 10:19 work on this public house model it's it's much more the much more interactive the customer interacts a lot more a lot of the space is considered a public space and so a lot of times people will go in and find a table and order from the bartender and bring it to them we kind of have a hybrid model model in place where you will be you can order from the bartender you can order from your server you can order from a manager so it's a much more free-flowing and interactive there's a reason for that there's a lot of changes that have that are going on in the restaurant industry and through the legislature we've we're seeing a lot of increases in the cost of labor and so we have in doing this public house model we are purposely trying to minimize the amount of labor
▶ 11:09 that we need to have in order to provide the experience that we're trying to provide so in doing this public house model we that that's the reason that you know we say 40 in to believe it or not at Turner's seafoods we have almost 100 employees I always shake my head I can't believe that but you know we you will see this over time that restaurants if you look at new restaurant models a lot of them are designed with with no labor there's actually a new restaurant called spice on Washington Street in Boston that literally is completely run by robots except for two people so but that's in response to some of the legislators things that we're dealing with but parking spaces there's you know there's parking out back we you know I don't think we're pretty much assuming
▶ 12:03 Monica C. Medeiros: the spaces that Stearns and Hill had for their space so I you know we we are our footprint is the same but we do have increased amount of seating but not not significant and you have you're familiar with the different employee parking regulations yes yes we go over that with all our employees and make sure that they're abiding by those customers it might be a little more smooth maybe yes so we're really I think everything is in order as far as I can see and we're very excited as well about it thank you thank you very good thank you uh oh go ahead me okay well thank you i'm not an uh i'm a non-voting member but i appreciate uh chairman um the opportunity to ask a couple of questions um and first i wanted to acknowledge i'm i was really excited when i was
▶ 12:57 Manisha Bewtra: although i was sad to see strings and he'll leave really excited when i heard that you would be um taking over that space and I'm I want to applaud you for doing all this research and coming up with this really unique concept that will bring some of our like history to life I'm curious you mentioned that the upstairs was going to be like eventually more of a function hall but in the short term you'll use that while you're finishing the downstairs did I understand that correctly correct but as a function space oh as a function yes just what do kind of envisioned for the function space and will that be open if not rented to the public it's um in our restaurant in salem we have almost the identical setup it's kind of we we laughed at
▶ 13:43 it after we realized that we were purchasing this building but um our second floor in salem is a function space that holds about a hundred people um it has the business is funny the staircase goes up the middle of the of the business just like it does here in melrose so What we do mostly in Salem is rehearsal dinners. That seems to be our Ballywick. I'm not sure if it'll be the same here, but, you know, functions anywhere from, you know, I'm going to say 30 to 100 people, you know. But we also envision a lot, you know, this business is so focused on Melrose, we foresee, you know, maybe fundraisers being held up there, you know, community fundraisers and things that, you know, people will come to so what the mix is going to be I'm not 100% sure is you
▶ 14:35 Manisha Bewtra: know but I'm certainly you know showers and we do a lot of fair amount of bereavements and across the street but this seems to be a good I know a large calling for that at certain times so but it's it's the point is that space is finished and it's ready to go and we've got four or five months before ready to open downstairs and we've the phone's been ringing so great well thank you um I guess I the I'm excited about the function space I think we do need that one thing I just sort of want to put the bug in your ear I know a lot of folks in town what sometimes there's not a lot of like meeting space that's not in City Hall or not in a church or you know where you can just sort of have an impromptu meeting other than you know like Starbucks closes at 9 so the
▶ 15:24 Manisha Bewtra: upstairs of that space was something that a lot of groups like subcommittees I'm looking at alderman McMaster sometimes we when we were both on the Human Rights Commission sometimes we'd have subcommittee meetings up there to hash out ideas so that's another need in the community that I just want to put the bug in your ear that we'd love to see some space I'm sure the downstairs will work for that as well I'm hearing you thank you okay thank you thank you I've been a patron of the Turner's for quite a few years now now doing the Victorian Fair you had some of your employees dressed in the colonial garb their attire and so forth is that going to be the style in the restaurant we haven't quite decided on uniforms I think that will be certainly you'll see
▶ 16:11 that at certain times maybe on the 18th and 19th of April and on 4th of July but we will certainly one of the things that we've learned and I think we've been executing lately is you know people like businesses restaurants to be celebratory and for instance I'm not sure if you remember last year's Christmas but you know my brother Chris went crazy Jack decorating the place and that we it really it helps people like coming to that energy and seeing that and so we We will certainly have some revolutionary garb dressed at certain celebratory dates, but the uniforms we haven't quite decided, but they'll reflect that era. Very good. Now your corporation is involved quite heavily in seafood, fishing, and so forth, and a colonial
▶ 17:07 menu seems different from the corporation's menu. What would your menu look like? You know, I guess the short answer is probably gastropub. You know, when you really look at it, I think traditional revolutionary fare probably had more seafood than we're going to offer because we want people to go back across the street. But, you know, for instance, oysters was a very, you know, staple back then. it'll be one of the things that we're excited about is to be able to create a menu that is not as big as as the seafood house's menu you know owning a seafood restaurant i know i tried authentic new england seafood restaurant we are almost required to have so many different offerings whether it's clam chowder or scrud or baked this and all that so it it's it gets fairly
▶ 18:07 big we're look we're anxious and excited to hone down a nice menu that's got great great food it's gonna have a great burger we know that that's gonna be one of the staples and that's just true of any tavern and public house and you know but I think that and and you know some of the local be what they call it beers crafted beers I'm not a big beer drinker but that is something that you know seems to ring whenever we talk to anybody about you know what we're serving so but you know a chicken pot pie shepherd's pie that'll be part of what we're doing and but great salads and you know there'll be some healthy options on there as well okay thank you very much good luck thank you and I'm ready to come you're welcome any further comments seeing none we do have a motion
▶ 19:01 John N. Tramontozzi: to recommend on the floor all in favor aye aye any opposed seeing none so what will happen next is the we have voted to recommend to the full board for approval and that will occur at the next full board meeting you do not have to appear at that time but thank you so much thank you mr chairman thank you everybody thank you thank you the second order on the agenda is order 2019-22 It's the application of DBA Aya Transportation at 139 West Emerson Street, apartment 10, in Merrill's Mass for a livery license. Motion to suspend the rules so we may hear from the applicant. We do have a motion to suspend the rules and second it. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, Mr. Donjua, is it, Donjua?
▶ 19:59 Good evening, if you could just identify yourself. your name and address and tell us a little bit about your request for the delivery license okay hi everybody my name is Joe I think here and he live in 139 with Emerson Suisse Merrill's and my plan is to to apply for for a permit in order to get the mass post sticker okay do we have any questions from any members of the committee where are you going from here to the airport or is it everywhere no i'm i'm working with some companies like uber groundlink okay and those those companies they require the mass port sticker so to to get the mass port sticker in uh in order to get the mass port sticker you have to go through the the city hall process okay thank you thank you mr chair
▶ 21:00 motion to recommend for passage second all right we do have a motion recommended for passage by alderman mortimer seconded by alderman Boisselle on further discussion alderman medeiros thank you uh have you been driving for a while right yes yes uh could you talk a little bit about your experience um my experience it was with uber uh i was uh driving uh uber regular uber and then updated to a black black car service so and that's why I'm I want to apply for the license from the city hall to to get the mass port sticker in order to pick up people from the airport and your car is garaged at your home yes and I think we have uh pretty much everything in order here you're insured as well yes yes okay very good
▶ 22:01 Shawn M. MacMaster: thank you thank you good luck thank you all set thank you also alderman mcmaster thank you mr chairman thank you sir for being here this evening um just so that i understand it correctly the public will not have the opportunity to call you directly you're going to be dispatched by a ride sharing service to go directly to pick somebody up at the airport or to drop someone off at the airport is that correct um so so most the time like i'm working with the with the app so whenever i have uh like if i want to go to the airport i am and then i will receive a request like people they request uber drivers so for me to to go to the airport i have to have the the massport sticker because there is an area so without a massport sticker you can't pick up
▶ 22:48 John N. Tramontozzi: people from there thank you yeah i think i think if i could have just a little doubt is i think the way it works is at the uber and the other company um thank you um you could call in and get a ride to the airport uh without the the need for a livery license however you cannot transport from the airport out of the airport because massport requires all livery and cabs to have the proper license i think that's the way it works it's coming out of the airport that's the problem it's not so much going into the airport is that is that right yeah because also airport it's okay but in order to to pick up people from the airport you have to have the mass port sticker and livery plates right because uh something happened you're going to
▶ 23:36 John N. Tramontozzi: be responsible for them you know what i mean right because you have to have those documents right the drivers are all corralled and yeah sections even uber and lyft drivers as well cabs thank you we do have a motion to recommend on the floor any further discussion seeing none on the motion all in favor aye any opposed seeing none so this we have recommended for passage your application to the full board this will be passed on to the full board for final vote you do not have to appear here again and we'll let you know thank you thank you so much thank you motion to adjourn. Question to adjourn by Alderman Mortimer, seconded by Alderman Voizel. On the motion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, we are adjourned for the evening. Good night.