By John Schwing

WESTPORT — Combatants in the months-long fight over whether Old Mill Grocery & Deli should be allowed to serve alcohol were swiftly sent to their corners Tuesday when the Zoning Board of Appeals chairman called foul.

“I’m not comfortable,” ZBA Chairman Jim Ezzes said about moving forward with the scheduled hearing on an appeal of the market’s liquor license application signed in August by Mary Young, who then was the town’s planning zoning and director.

He and several other board members said they had yet to review documents filed just prior to Tuesday’s meeting by lawyers representing both sides of the dispute over selling liquor at the small, century-old market at 222 Hillspoint Road.

“I can’t impress on both of you, you’ve had a month to do this … It would have been helpful if you could have gotten [the late documents] to us on a timely basis so we could have had a full hearing this evening and voted on it,” Ezzes told Joel Green, the lawyer representing several neighbors challenging the liquor license application, and Eric Bernheim, who has proposed zoning regulation changes that would expand the number of local food establishments in residential zones allowed to serve alcohol and was representing the market.

The appeal had initially been scheduled for review at the ZBA’s Sept. 24 meeting, but was reassigned at Green’s request to the board’s Tuesday agenda.

Green explained that last week he found additional documents in Planning and Zoning Department files that support his case, and was unable to share them with his clients until Monday, which delayed the filing with the ZBA.

That said, Green indicated he didn’t feel the new documents should have been a burden for ZBA members to digest before Tuesday’s meeting. 

But when Ezzes quizzed other ZBA members about the issue, nearly all of them said they had yet to read the newly filed documents.

Green then agreed with Ezzes’s suggestion that it would be beneficial to wait until next month’s meeting to make a full presentation of his case rather than to begin Tuesday and have to repeat it in November.

Bernheim also was amenable to waiting another month.

The issue dates to last April when the group that owns the market, Soundview Empowerment Alliance, Inc., sought permission to allow Romanacci, its tenant running the business, to serve beer and wine to customers on its premises.

The proposal was debated at several contentious meetings of the Planning and Zoning Commission, which approved a revised text amendment in June. The amendment permits alcohol sales by pre-existing retail food establishments only in B Residential zones, effectively restricting its scope to Old Mill Grocery & Deli, while prohibiting the same at similar businesses such as the Porch at Christie’s on Cross Highway and the Country Store on Wilton Road.

Green, who represented neighbors opposed to the Old Mill application during P&Z hearings, later in June filed a lawsuit challenging the commission’s decision and asking that a Superior Court judge overturn the approval.

Opening another front in the battle over the market’s efforts to sell alcohol, Green’s appeal to the ZBA specifically targets Young’s decision to sign the state liquor permit application on behalf of Romanacci since that action was based on the P&Z’s approval of a flawed text amendment.

The appeal has been reassigned to the ZBA’s Nov. 12 meeting.

John Schwing, interim editor of the Westport Journal, has held senior editorial and writing posts at southwestern Connecticut media outlets for four decades. Learn more about us here.