‘U Me’ eatery planned for site
Published on January 16th, 2008
STONEHAM, MA - A restaurateur seeking to purchase and renovate the vacant D’Agostino’s eatery along Franklin Street met intense scrutiny from the Selectmen and Stoneham Square merchants this week during a routine request for a liquor license.
The Selectmen eventually gave the go-ahead on the project, but still maintain the need for site plan approval before the restaurant can take hold on Franklin Street.
During this week’s Selectmen meeting, Boston attorney Joseph Matzkin, of Looney and Grossman, unveiled his clients’ plans to open an upscale Asian food eatery at 19 Franklin Street, the old site of the shuttered D’Agostinos restaurant.
The property, which lacks on-site parking and directly abuts the side and rear of the Love’s Furniture condo development, has been unoccupied for years now, and town officials have regularly complained that a significant amount of back taxes were owed by the former owner.
According to Matzkin, his clients, who already operate two other eateries in Cambridge and Arlington, planned to invest nearly $600,000 into the building, which would reopen as the U Me restaurant.
In addition paying all the back taxes and outstanding bills for the property, the applicants would also relocate the kitchen area, so that any nuisance to Love’s condo owners from cooking vents could be minimized.
Patrons would park in the municipal lot across from the Franklin Street site, as the special permit for the first restaurant reportedly contained a provision that allowed that arrangement.
“The restaurant is going to seat approximately seventy [people],” the lawyer explained. ‘They’re looking to spend approximately $600,000 to renovate the space. So this is going to be a nice, upscale, Japanese restaurant. I think it’s going to be something you’ll be proud of.”
“We’re looking for a full alcoholic license, for seven days [a week],” Matzkin added. “We would ask for an 11 p.m. close. They would serve lunch, then close for a little while, and then reopen and serve dinner.”
According to John LoPriore, who recently opened an insurance company at the Love’s Furniture building, he worried that the restaurant would be designed in a manner that was inconsistent with the revitalized Stoneham Square area.
The new businessman called upon the Selectmen to require some type of renderings of the new restaurant, in order to ensure that the space was designed in an upscale manner as promised.
LoPriore further questioned whether the dumpsters would be stored in a manner that minimized the potential for rodent infestation and voiced concerns about parking associated with the eatery.
Local contractor Patrick Keohane, who developed the Love’s Furniture building along with business partner Joseph Cunningham, later voiced the same concerns.
“The concern is to ensure, before we make any decisions, that there’s consideration as to what the town is going to look like,” said LoPriore. “They’re saying, we’re going to spend $600,000, but what does that do for the town? How does that help all of us and how will you guys co-exist with the rest of us?”
“When we got our approvals [for the Love’s redevelopment], we did come in with the exteriors and showed what we were going to do,” said Keohane. “I would hate tonight to give a liquor license and take their word that they’re going to do what they saying they’re going to do.”
Matzkin later vowed to work cooperatively with the town to design the space in a way that fit in with the surrounding downtown area.
However, the attorney argued that without any concrete regulations or zoning bylaws to rely upon, the town would be holding his clients to an impossible standard.
“What we can say is that certainly, we will work with the town. However, this is not a new use. This is sitting before the liquor board and it’s a fairly straight forward request,” the lawyer said. “At this stage, I don’t think it’s a fair request to say, ‘you have to do this.’”
“If you have sets of rules and regulations as to how that site is supposed to look like, then fine, we’ll comply with that,” Matzkin continued. “But without that, you’re putting me between a rock and a hard place.”
Several Selectmen, including Paul Rotondi and Robert Sweeney, would later agree that the applicants had met the conditions for the liquor license, and that any other issues should be addressed in a different forum, such as a site plan hearing.
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