Business & Tech

Another Sports Bar Showdown Near Barclays

On Monday locals bashed a bar on Pacific Street across from the Atlantic Yards that would cater to crowds bound for Brooklyn Nets games.

Prime 6 was only the tip of the iceberg.

Hot off the heels of a fight over one sports bar near the Barclays Center, a new showdown is brewing between locals and the owner of a second bar that will cater to sports fans going to Brooklyn Nets games.

The owners of a Manhattan restaurant want to open Player’s Gastro Pub and Sportsbar on Pacific Street near Flatbush Avenue, which would seat 150 people and be open until 4 a.m. every night.

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But on Monday residents at a meeting of Community Board 6 scoffed at the notion of the sports bar on their block.

“To have five or six bars in one area, you get to a tipping point and suddenly you have Bourbon Street in Brooklyn,” said Harry Lipman, a lawyer who was instrumental in the previous sports bar battle. “You have people coming out of a game at 10 p.m. or so — they already had a couple of beers, then they get more drunk, then they’re fumbling for car keys — it’s potentially loud and boisterous.”

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But a lawyer for the owners of Player’s Gastro Pub, Terry Flynn Jr., sought to minimize the impact of the new business.

“The arena is part of the whole rebirth of the area. We want to be part of that and serve the community, as well as those who come into the community,” said Flynn. “It’s an appropriate use of the space.”

Many residents at the meeting, though, countered that they’d devoted years to making the neighborhood safe.

“We have fought long and hard to bring stability to that block,” said Syble Henderson. “We do not need a bar on Pacific Street, we do not want a bar on Pacific Street.”

One attendee even passed around information drawing a link between an increase in crime and sports bars.

The new fight echoes the dispute over Prime 6, a bar set to open at Flatbush and Sixth avenues in May. After an outcry over possible noise coming from the bar — particularly its outdoor area — the owner agreed to that seems to have mollified neighbors. 

But with the another sports bar applying for liquor licenses only mere weeks after the last battle was resolved, a vision of Park Slope, Prospect Heights and Fort Greene overwhelmed by boozed-up sports fans is coming into focus.

“It comes down to saturation,” said Lipman. “We really need a legislative solution, or a policy solution on the part of State Liquor Authority, or there will be neighborhoods that are ruined.”

Gwen Ruelle contributed reporting.


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