From The Villager
Sushi restaurant tries to dance around permit rules
By: Albert Amateau
May 02, 2001
Residents don’t like the exterior design of this Seventh Ave. S. restaurant, and its sidewalk permit has been called fraudulent by local officialsA sidewalk café that "was born overnight" last week in front of a new restaurant with a bright yellow and orange facade on Seventh Ave. S., provoked vigilant Village neighbors to begin an inquiry that uncovered a Department of Consumer Affairs temporary permit that appears to have been forged.
Art Strickler, district manager of Community Board 2, said he discovered on April 26 that the Consumer Affairs approval letter granting a 30-day permit for Sushi Samba, 87 Seventh Ave. S., was fraudulent after he called Consumer Affairs, police and other city agencies about the illegal opening of the unenclosed sidewalk café.
"This is a very vigilant community," said Strickler. "Anybody who thinks he can get away with something like that is stupid - or has a lot of chutzpah." Sushi Samba, a Japanese-Brazilian "fusion cuisine" restaurant, opened three months ago.
Simon Oren, a principal in Sushi Samba as well as French Roast, a coffee shop on Sixth Ave. at W. 11th St., said he first learned that the permit was a fraud on April 30 when he came back from a wedding in Kansas City.
"It's unbelievable what happened. We are victims here," Oren said on May 1. He blamed the architect's expediter, Andrew Oprysko, for providing the questionable document. Buildings Department, Consumer Affairs and other permits are usually secured by expediters employed by architects and other professionals.
Oren said he would press criminal charges against expediter Oprysko. A man who answered the phone at Basil Associates, the designer of the Sushi Samba sidewalk café, said Oprysko and Shimon Bokovza, the manager of Sushi Samba, went to the Department of Consumer Affairs on May 1 to resolve the problem. "I myself am bewildered by this," Bokovza said later. "I need to see what steps we have to take to resolve the problem. I think we were taken to the cleaners."
The Basil Associates spokesperson said he did not know anything about the bogus letter. "I think Shimon [Bokovza] wants to kill Andy [Oprysko], but he [Oprysko] will be back in the office in a couple of days and I'll ask him about it then," he said.
The document, dated April 23, 2001, was supposed to extend the sidewalk license of the previous restaurant at 87 Seventh Ave. S. for 30 days to Sushi Samba. Strickler, however, said he learned from Consumer Affairs that the old license number on the approval letter was for a café at an entirely different location.
The letter, signed by Beverly Gotay, assistant director of licensing for D.C.A., also has the name of Jules Polonetsky as agency commissioner printed on the letterhead. Polonetsky, however, resigned from D.C.A. a year ago and was replaced by Jane Hoffman. But John Radziejewski, press officer for the department, said that old stationary has occasionally been used for a valid permit. However, the body of the approval letter appears to have been written with a different typewriter and the bottom lacks the required department seal. Strickler also said that D.C.A. doesn't even issue temporary permits anymore.
Strickler said he first phoned Consumer Affairs on April 25 to protest that the café approval was made without a community board review. "They said, 'What approval? There hasn't even been an application.' So they sent inspectors down the next day and a manager gave everybody copies of this letter."
The bogus nature of the document was discovered on Friday, April 27. "Sgt. [Timothy] Sikorski called me and said it looked funny," Strickler said. Police and Consumer Affairs went to the restaurant and asked a manager to go to the Sixth Precinct but made no arrest. The following day, the 16 tables and 40 chairs on the sidewalk were removed and have not been put out since then, according to Bokovza, Sushi Samba's general manager. The restaurant, with about 90 indoor seats, was reviewed in New York Magazine and has become a trendy destination.
Sushi Samba's colorful facade has also alienated many Villagers. Strickler called it "ugly" and Ruth Kuzub, proprietor of Silversmith, a jewelry shop on W. Fourth St., called it "horrible" and an outrage to the Greenwich Village Historic District. Nevertheless, the design was approved last year by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Kuzub also contends that Sushi Samba does not have a permit for a metal trellis of intersecting arches it erected on top of the restaurant.
©The Villager 2003
