Center’s Swank Restaurant May Be Denied Liquor License : Residents Fighting Studio City Mall Find an Ally in Beverage Board

Studio City residents say the City of Los Angeles’ approval of a controversial $15-million shopping center next to their homes was a sobering experience.

So they fought back and persuaded the state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to tentatively deny a liquor license for an exclusive restaurant proposed as the centerpiece of the project.

Without the license, the planned Bistro Garden restaurant will not be built at the site near the intersection of Ventura Boulevard and Coldwater Canyon Avenue, its owner says.

And without the Bistro Garden as an enticement to other tenants and to shoppers, plans for the upscale center at Coldwater are in jeopardy, the center’s developer says.

Homeowners say they are worried that a liquor license will result in rowdy and intoxicated customers spilling into their neighborhood. Their single-family homes are a few steps from the shopping center.

They say they decided to use the liquor issue as a weapon against the retail complex after city officials failed to restrict shopping center traffic from entering their neighborhood.

The San Fernando Valley’s ranking Alcoholic Beverage Control official said Thursday he is recommending denial of the Bistro Garden license because of the protests.

“For all intents and purposes, our investigation is closed,” said F.J. (Jim) Smith, the department’s district administrator in Van Nuys. “I don’t think that the restaurant will get a favorable recommendation at this level.”

Smith said higher-level department officials will review the recommendation, although “it’s very seldom” that field office rulings are overturned. “We prevail about 95% of the time,” he said.

Smith said his office’s recommendation will be filed as soon as city officials decide whether to issue a conditional-use permit for on-site liquor sales to the restaurant.

The tentative ABC ruling was hailed by homeowners who have fought for a year to block the shopping center, planned for the site of the defunct Tail O’ the Cock restaurant.

But it was bitterly denounced by the developer and by others who say they were looking forward to the Beverly Hills-style Bistro opening in the Valley.

Kurt Niklas, owner of the renowned Bistro and Bistro Garden restaurants in Beverly Hills, bristled when asked Thursday if they attract a rowdy crowd.

He said that at one time, he felt his restaurants were too good for the Valley. Now, he said, “I’m starting to think that way” again.

“If they’re not ready for my restaurant out there, I’m not going to shoot myself,” he said.

Shopping center developer Herbert M. Piken said he was shocked by the stance of ABC officials and by the attitude of homeowners.

“The Bistro is the most sedate, well-respected, classy place you’ve seen in your life. The atmosphere is anything but rowdy,” Piken said. “The opponents are grabbing at anything they can. If they kill this, I don’t know what they’re looking for.”

Maybe, Piken said, he will put something like a McDonald’s hamburger restaurant in the center instead.

Polly Ward, president of the Studio City Residents Assn., said the homeowners’ liquor license stance does not reflect the views of her group, which helped negotiate a scaled-down plan for the shopping center last year.

“Why would they single out a high-class restaurant that will not be a problem?” Ward asked. “It will not attract a huge crowd or a bawdy crowd. It will probably attract less traffic and noise than anything else that could go in there.”

But Rose Elmassian, a director of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., said her group is happy that alcoholic beverage officials are looking closely at the restaurant. She said city officials have failed to safeguard nearby residents from shopping center traffic.

Homeowner Eileen Kenyon, who has lived for 30 years on Dickens Street, directly behind the shopping center site, said she and her neighbors will continue to fight the liquor-license application until it is formally rejected.

“I’m so glad the state is protecting us. Our city officials are not protecting us at all,” Kenyon said Thursday. “This is a terribly busy street. All we need is people drunk to make this a circus.”