In Crossbar’s first appearance before the Baltimore Liquor Board under new leadership, the lawyer representing the controversial Federal Hill beer garden project was told his request for a hardship extension was being tabled – and rolled into a September 25 hearing on the license’s viability.

“It makes sense to put it all together,” Chairman Thomas Ward said yesterday before the unanimous vote in which he was joined by fellow commissioners Harvey E. Jones and Dana Petersen Moore.

It was not the outcome sought by Crossbar attorney Joseph R. Woolman III, whose clients wanted the board’s blessing to continue their work to convert 12-18 East Cross Street to a German-style beer hall.

“Why should we do that? We received a mandate from this board to be here,” Woolman said, urging the board to stick to the hearing’s purpose, to decide whether Crossbar should be given an extension on a deadline to open that he said started ticking down on February 20, when the previous Liquor Board declared their license valid.

“It’s a very limited scope issue before you,” Woolman said.

But opponents of the project, Paul Robinson and Federal Hill Neighborhood Association vice president Brooke McDonald, disagreed.

“We were hoping the hardship extension could be stayed,” McDonald said, pointing out that a more fundamental question looms when Crossbar returns for a planned September 25 hearing.

Mother of all “Zombies”?

McDonald and Robinson are part of a group of 21 Federal Hill residents who filed a petition in city Circuit Court for judicial review of the board’s February decision.

The petitioners’ attorney, Len Homer of Ober Kaler, and Liquor Board counsel Alice Pinderhughes, agreed to remand the question of license viability to the new board for consideration three weeks from now.

Why the concern over whether Crossbar’s license is valid? Robinson explained that the hardship extension request was not made within the required 180-day period from the time the establishment closed.

“Under that provision, the period begins when a business is closed,” Robinson said.

Ward asked him how long since the business at 12 East Cross Street was in operation?

“In this case, it closed September 1, 2009,” Robinson said. There was a long pause.

“Whoa, how did you get that through?” Ward muttered.

Robinson explained that the former chairman, Stephan W. Fogelman, declared in February the license “viable,” citing the legal principle of estoppel. Since the board had allowed the licensees to pay fees and renew their license for four or five years, the license should be considered “viable” as a matter of fairness.

“Viable? What does that mean?” Ward asked.

The Mega-Bar Issue

Woolman did not prevail, but the back-and-forth Ward allowed offered a sort of a primer for the new board on the case, which has generated hours of passionate testimony over the last two years and served as a lightning rod for the issue of so-called “mega-bars.”

In papers filed by Woolman as part of his hardship extension request, he had complained about the delays he said were caused  by the Circuit Court appeal.

“There unfortunately remains a relative minority of zealous protestants in this matter,” he wrote. (McDonald took exception to that during the hearing, saying that many in Federal Hill feel that the bars have gotten out of hand.)

Woolman said the Crossbar team had found support from other groups in the community, including the South Baltimore Neighborhood Association, with whom they negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding. He noted that Peter Auchincloss had been “at the helm” of their efforts to enlist community backing.

(Auchincloss, chairman of the Parking Authority and a former Baltimore Planning Commission chairman, sat in the audience yesterday but did not speak.)

Woolman also argued that the hardship extension was needed because of “undue delays caused by various agencies in Baltimore City.” He particularly cited the Board of Municipal Zoning Appeals. (The Brew wrote about some of the City Hall lobbying efforts that may have contributed to that delay.)

“As of the date of licensees’ hardship request, a building permit had yet to be issued,” Woolman said.

Amid the lawyer’s complaints about bureaucratic delays from city agencies, Ward told him that at the Liquor Board “we are not burdened by regulation.”

“I decide the regulation, to be honest with you,” Ward said.