Back Bay convenience store loses bid to sell booze

The Boston Licensing Board today rejected a request from Quality Mart, 21 Massachusetts Ave., to sell beer, wine and hard liquor.

At a hearing yesterday, acting Board Chairman Michael Connolly warned owner Aymen Rajeh he would vote to oppose because of the board's longstanding policy against granting new liquor licenses to convenience stores.

"It's a New Hampshire issue," because the board doesn't want Boston to wind up like that state, where every convenience store seems to carry liquor, he said.

Rajeh said he wanted to add liquor to his stock because his customers keep asking him why they can't buy a bottle of wine with their dinner fixings. Rajeh, who has operated his store for more than 18 years, said he would be willing to agree to conditions to limit problems, such as prohibitions on nips, sales of single cans of beer and kegs.

Rajeh's proposal had both supporters and opponents.

Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, which represents neighborhood businesses, said liquor would help Rajeh keep his convenience store and the neighboring Subway, which he also owns, open at a time when small, low-end businesses are increasingly fleeing the neighborhood because of high rents. And while Back Bay has seen a population increase over the past decade, the number of stores selling liquor has remained stagnant.

She added she was confident the board would continue to do a good job keeping liquor sales from getting out of hand, unlike in New York City where, she said, over a weekend trip she was amazed and aghast at "the bedlam" she saw thanks to things like 2-for-1 martinis. "This would never happen in Boston," she said.

Martin Samuels, who has long lived on Mass. Ave., and who has even owned several buildings on the street, said that giving Quality Mart a liquor license would actually improve the street. He said Marlboro Market now effectively has a monopoly on liquor sales in that part of the neighborhood and the result has been higher prices for consumers and an influx of the sort of people who buy the nips, half pints and single cans of beer he said the store sells. He said it's gotten so bad one of his neighbors now drives out of the area to buy her wine rather than shop there.

But Barbara Papesch, a Marlborough Street block captain for the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, said she is tired of "all the kids [who] come out and try to find booze" during such events as the Marathon and victory celebrations for local sports teams. Papesh said that in addition to Marlboro Mart, that particular part of the Back Bay has several restaurants and two bars that serve liquor.