PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Licensing Board grilled several local proprietors on Monday in an effort to crack down on the number of inactive liquor licenses currently in limbo throughout the city.

Debbie Wong's, Chameleon's Nightclub, Tyler Restaurant, Jimmy's Restaurant, 7 Winter Grille and the Polish Community Center are among the establishments that have closed down within the past two years and hold unused alcohol serving licenses.  

Two of these, 7 Winter Grille and the Polish club, intend to reopen this year.  

7 Winter Grille has elected to expand and renovate its second floor space for banquet purposes, necessitating the installation of an elevator in order to make it fully accessible.  This costly construction will take about three months of work that would seriously impair restaurant operations, leading the owners to decide to close temporarily, beginning in April. 

"It's quite a substantial project," said attorney Jeff Lynch on behalf of proprietor Michael Mulligan.  

The 7 Winter Street building was formerly the site of Mazzeo's Ristorante, which used both downstairs restaurant space and upstairs banquet space, but new changes to the building have triggered building codes requiring the new owners to make the upstairs ADA compliant.

Less clear is the future of the Polish Community Club, according to John H. Barrett, who served less than a week as the club's appointed manager before its closing in early January of this year. Barrett told the board on Monday that club needs time to reorganize its board of directors and will be reaching out to its 265 members for support in reopening their doors.

"If we're unable to, we'll have to sell the building," Barrett told the board. 

"We wouldn't want to see the Polish Community Club go out of business,"  said board chairman Carmen Massimiano. "It has played a key and central role in the city of Pittsfield for many years."  

The board granted the club until August to meet with its memberships and decide on a plan to return and update them on the status of the license.

The licenses associated with Tyler Restaurant and the East Street bar formerly operated as Chameleon's are for sale, and in the former case a deal is expected to be cemented by mid July.  

In the case of the former Debbie Wong's restaurant, the board granted four more months to owner John Hebert to demonstrate more efforts to sell the vacant Dalton Avenue building and liquor license attached to it.

The large Chinese restaurant closed its doors in May 2012.  Following a court ruling against the former tenant, the liquor license ultimately reverted from the tenant back to Herbert in late 2013, at which time he hoped to lease the space to a new establishment.

Now he is hoping to find a buyer for the building along with the liqour license. Herbert told the board that he has spoken to some real estate agents and attempted to solicit potential buyers, although the property is not listed on the market. 

"If nothing happens, I'm seriously considering opening something myself," he said.

"I just don't think we can go another 15 months with this license unused," warned board member Richard Stockwell.

"You've got to find a way to step it up," agreed Thomas Campoli. "We want you to do what you need to do so that you're either operating this entity or it's being sold."

The board has struggled with the issue of inactive licenses in recent years, repeatedly expressing leniency in its extensions to avoid further loss of licenses to the city.  In September, the number of licenses permitted to city operators was reduced by one when the board did revoke a license issued to The Tavern, which had closed four years earlier and gone unsold.  

"We don't want to lose this license for the city of Pittsfield," concluded Massimiano, granting Herbert four more months to update the board with some demonstrable action.

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