Restaurant Owner Taking Legal Action Says Tewksbury Board’s Decision Rendered His Business ‘Useless’

By Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.

Feb. 21–TEWKSBURY — A three-month debate over a 10 p.m. alcohol-serving restriction that selectmen slapped on The Bury’s liquor license is heading for a showdown, as the Main Street restaurant’s new owner pledged this week to seek “remedies on multiple legal fronts.”

Richard Losanno’s efforts to have a 1 a.m. closing time restored on the license were shot down by selectmen once again last week, after months of wrangling between the two parties.

“My name has been damaged and my business has been rendered useless,” Losanno wrote in a statement provided to The Sun yesterday. “I am saddened that the fine taxpayers of Tewksbury will be paying the legal expenses for the absolutely absurd and ludicrous decisions of their elected officials.”

Losanno added that he will also be exploring “all options” available to confront a Hinckley Road resident who submitted a petition to selectmen last week, asking the board to keep the 10 p.m. rollback in place.

Losanno is arguing that Jane Saraceni submitted the petition using a photocopy of the names and signatures of more than two-dozen residents who had signed another petition in 2004.

That was submitted by neighbors in opposition to Losanno when he was seeking an entertainment license when he ran Bacci’s restaurant.

Although Saraceni admits that she compiled the recent petition using the older one, she also says that she got verbal approvals from the other residents in her close-knit neighborhood and has compiled another petition from scratch to prove it.

“We’re not the bad guys,” she said. “I want everybody to understand that there was no malice with this petition or any attempt to cover up anything. It just saved me from walking around the neighborhood in the freezing cold, which I ended up doing anyway.”

Selectmen first rolled back the eatery’s alcohol-serving hours from 1 a.m. to 10 p.m. last November, in response to an alleged liquor violation by the restaurant’s former owners, Robert and Andrea Taylor.

Police had found four people in the bar with four open beer bottles at about 3 a.m. on Oct. 17. By law, an establishment serving alcoholic beverages is to have a last call at 12:30 a.m., with all alcohol off the bar by 12:45.

Police Chief Alfred Donovan had recommended to selectmen that they impose anything from a written warning to a seven-day suspension on the restaurant. But selectmen proceeded with the hour rollback, which the Taylors then appealed to the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.

The state agency last month criticized selectmen for their vote, saying that it was “based on several legal flaws,” including a failure to hold a “public need hearing” and a hour rollback beyond what the law allows.

The town is currently contesting the ABCC ruling in Middlesex Superior Court, contending that it was within its rights to roll back the hours and that the state agency is overstepping its boundaries.

Losanno says he feels like there is a “personal vendetta” against him.

“The question I will probably never be able to answer is during a period when cities and towns in the commonwealth are searching for ways to cut budgets without cutting services, avoid tax hikes and debate commercial versus residential tax burdens, why are Tewksbury’s elected officials driving away solid and responsible businesses?” Losanno wrote in his statement.

But both selectmen and Saraceni have questioned whether the fifth restaurant and bar to be in the Main Street location since 1995 will be any better than its predecessors.

“Nobody has an issue with the restaurant. It’s the bar and the insanity that goes on in there. We need a break,” said Saraceni. “We’ve had people in that parking lot screaming and swearing. They were drag-racing on motorcycles in that lot. … We have a right to be able to sleep at night.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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