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No backup plan for Seaside Johnnies’ exit

With a vacant beachfront restaurant more than likely next summer, the Rye Town Park Commission does not have an alternative to the park’s exiting tenant, Seaside Johnnies, the commission president said.

On Nov. 16, John Ambrose, co-owner of Rye Town Park’s Seaside Johnnies restaurant, formally declined a counteroffer by the park’s commission to operate the restaurant in 2017. There is currently no solution to the expected vacancy next season, according to Gary Zuckerman, the commission president. File photo
On Nov. 16, John Ambrose, co-owner of Rye Town Park’s Seaside Johnnies restaurant, formally declined a counteroffer by the park’s commission to operate the restaurant in 2017. There is currently no solution to the expected vacancy next season, according to Gary Zuckerman, the commission president. File photo

According to Rye Town Supervisor Gary Zuckerman, a Democrat and president of the park commission, while commissioners have floated the idea of hiring concessioners to operate the park’s snack and beverage stands, or filling the park with food trucks, the commission currently does not have a solution to fill the hole left by Seaside Johnnies’ departure, which was finalized on Wednesday, Nov. 16, when John Ambrose, co-owner of the restaurant, rejected the latest, and final, offer from the commission.

“We will obviously do our due diligence and see what alternatives are available, but [at the moment], we have no backup plan,” Zuckerman told the Review on Wednesday.

During a park commission meeting on Nov. 15, commissioners again offered to extend Seaside Johnnies’ current deal, which expires at the end of 2016, for one year with a new option to re-sign the restaurant for a second year. As part of that deal, if the park commission could not formally agree to extend the license agreement for a second year, Ambrose and Sam Chernin, also a co-owner of Seaside Johnnies, would be refunded 25 percent of the fees in rent charged by the commission for the second year; approximately $25,000.

The new deal came on the heels of Ambrose’s displeasure with the commission’s previous one-year extension offer.

Ambrose, who has operated the restaurant since 2000, told the Review that he plans on rejecting any offer by the park commission unless it assures him two years in the location. “I would never in a million years take a one-year deal with an option,” he said. “The grey area that comes along with the option is something we don’t want to touch because it’s not guaranteed.”

According to Rye Brook Mayor Paul Rosenberg, a Democrat and member of the park commission who drafted the new proposal with the option year, the split between commissioners about offering either a one- or two-year deal ultimately led to the new offer. “My thought is that it would have turned into a two-year deal,” he said. “The commission did not intend on insulting Ambrose’s pride.”

Rosenberg said he is hopeful the commission will learn from the experience.

“I don’t think there is anyone to blame,” he said. “It was a group effort, and the [commission] felt there was an ample amount of time for the [request for proposals] to generate a certain amount of responses, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.”

In June, the park commission sent out a request for proposals, RFP, soliciting restaurateurs interested in operating the park for a 10-year period. But with a late August submission deadline, the commission left itself little time to review any proposals and make a decision.

That became further problematic when one of only two RFP respondents, Angelo Liberatore, an operating partner of the Fort Pond Bay Company—which operates Half Moon in Dobbs Ferry, Harvest on Hudson in Hastings-On-Hudson, and East by Northeast and the Stone Lion Inn in Montauk—pulled his proposal citing a lack of sufficient time to get a restaurant up and running for the 2017 season.

After Liberatore took himself out of the running, the commission received a multitude of alarming emails from residents aggravated over their minimal involvement in choosing a new operator. Faced with the possibility of a vacant restaurant and snack bar for the 2017 season, while also balancing a desire to revamp the RFP process to attract more respondents for the long term, the commission only offered Seaside Johnnies a one-year extension on its current lease.

Even with the risk of an economic loss of as much as $200,000 as a result of Ambrose closing his doors, and no viable alternative for 2017, Zuckerman said the commission will not initiate a new offer. “At this point, I would rule it out,” he said.