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Light Drizzle Sea Cliff Manor’s cabaret license is renewed
Events at Sea Cliff Manor will continue, after the Village of Sea Cliff approved the entertainment and live music venue’s cabaret license for three years.
The license, which was called into question due to noise and other complaints from neighbors, allows the venue to continue to book and host events.
Since last spring, the hall has been operating with a provisional cabaret license while Sea Cliff’s mayor and board of trustees considered the case. In the meantime, the Manor’s general manager, Nick Pellegrini, explained how he worked with affected residents to address their grievances.
“We’ve always tried to be a good neighbor, and we always will,” Pellegrini said. “If anyone ever says anything to us, we try to do the best we can to fix it.”
The major complaint by residents was about the noise coming from the venue. Pellegrini asserted that he had addressed this issue by hiring a noise security guard who neighbors can contact if the music gets too loud or if there are people gathering and talking outside the venue.
In another change, venue staff can’t park vehicles on the street near homes, and are also no longer allowed to lock or unlock them remotely in order to find them. The staff will also take out the trash in the morning, because the sound of trash removal at night could be heard throughout the neighborhood.
In addition, there were complaints about the smell of food coming from the Manor. To solve the problem, new vents were installed to better disperse the smells from the kitchen.
In previous meetings at Village Hall, Pellegrini and Patrick Hoebich, the Manor’s attorney, emphasized that installing the new vents was a large expense to the business, but the management was happy to pay for it if it helped the neighbors.
Patricia Wager, a neighbor who worked with Pellegrini to address the issues, said that she believed the community’s concerns had been assuaged.
She was one of the first residents to bring complaints forward, and had worked with Pellegrini and the Manor throughout the process.
“Nobody likes to fight with their neighbors, and we are really glad that the Manor was willing to work with us,” Wager said. “We are really optimistic that the deal that we worked out is going to work great for the neighborhood.”
One additional complaint was that the Manor had not been maintaining the eastern part of its property, however it was proven during the course of the proceedings that this section was in fact owned by the village. Hoebich said when the license was approved, Pellegrini got permission from the village to beautify that space out of his own pocket.
“The trustees granted him permission to voluntarily install that landscaping,” Hoebich continued. “The gesture was really intended to make their neighbors happy.”
The restoration of the cabaret license will allow the Manor to continue to operate as a venue for weddings and bar or bat mitzvahs, and encourage prospective parties to book the venue. Sea Cliff Mayor Elena Villafane and Hoebich said people who had booked or were looking to book the venue had reached out to them with concerns that the Manor would not have its cabaret license.
Villafane explained that she and the Board had been focused on ensuring that the residents’ concerns were met while also not tying the Manor’s figurative hands and preventing it from conducting business effectively. She said that she thought the Manor and its neighbors reached an amicable middle ground, and was happy to approve the cabaret license.
“I believe that they had good, productive conversations about what both sides needed to be in a harmonious situation,” Villafane said. “I really applaud the effort that both neighbors made in coming to an accommodation where both sides feel that they are being heard, valued and honored by their neighbor.”
