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Owner of troubled, closed Allston nightclub might seek to sell it to a new owner to re-open the place because his plans to tear it down for apartments are on hold

Alex Matov

Matov during Tuesday hearing.

Alex Matov, whose Garage nightclub on Linden Street in Allston was ordered shut last year after a series of violent incidents, is asking the Boston Licensing Board to let him sell the place's liquor license to a new nightclub operator, who would re-open the club and run it until Matov can gain the financing he needs to replace the building with a new apartment complex - one that might have room for a nightclub of its own.

At a hearing Tuesday, Matov and his attorney told a skeptical board that he would have nothing to do with the operation of the reopened club.

"This operator or any affiliate will not be at any time be operating this license," attorney Lesley Delaney Hawkins said.

At a meeting yesterday, the board voted to begin the process to strip Matov of his license and offer it to somebody else. But that means giving him six months to show that he is actually doing something with the license for the club, which has been closed since April, 2022 - when gunfire erupted outside the place, just hours after board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce allowed it to re-open for the first time since it was ordered shut following a double shooting that may have sprung from a fight inside the club in November, 2021.

"It is quite unfair," board member Keeana Saxon said. "There are a lot of restaurants out there who would put [a liquor license] to good use."

Due to the way the state legislature limits the number of liquor licenses in Boston, the price of an all-alcohol license like the one Matov holds now approaches $600,000 on the open market.

Delaney Hawkins pleaded with the board to let Matov renew his liquor license for 2024, as it let him renew it for 2023, so that he could finish negotiations with an operator she did not identify to re-open the club - both in the current old building and possibly in the new apartment complex should it get built. She said she would file a more formal statement and timeline on selling the license by the end of this week.

Joyce, however, said she is beyond tired of dealing with the club. She said that as part of the board's decision to indefinitely suspend the club's liquor license on May 26, 2022, it told Matov to give it such notification, which he then never did.

"Why haven't we received that?" she asked. "We have now given you a year to figure this out and now I'm chasing you down again," she said, adding the whole matter is a waste of her time, her staff's time and even the police's time.

Matov said that in May, 2022, he expected by now the site would be in the process of being redeveloped into a new complex with 349 apartments. Now, though, "the development that had previously been approved is indefinitely on hold given the current market for redevelopment," Delaney Hawkins said.

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Comments

If you're tired of this, then quit. Go home and watch Netflix. No one gives a (expletive) about the feelings of someone who makes almost six figures (if not that) to work two days a week.

What a cancer to Boston people like her are. That's something I don't miss about the place.

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She never said anything about her feelings, and what she makes and how much she works have literally nothing to do with this issue.

The feelings of people who might not like to get shot because of gunfights outside a club do matter though. Apparently people who care about this are a "cancer?"

Glad you left.

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She never said anything about her feelings

So Gaffin misquoted her? I doubt that.

and what she makes and how much she works have literally nothing to do with this issue.

Sure it does. I'll come back and do her job for half her pay. Maybe do the taxpayers a favor for once.

The feelings of people who might not like to get shot because of gunfights outside a club do matter though. Apparently people who care about this are a "cancer?"

Cue Chris Rock: "You're supposed to care, you low expectation-having (expletive)! What, you want a cookie?" Also, getting shot outside of this club is avoided by not going near this club.

Glad you left.

I wish there were betting pools for whether it would be anon trash or a registered user who would be first with this basic-ass retort. I would have cashed a ticket.

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He's completely unreasonable. It shows that these places can't follow simple instructions they made a tacit agreement to uphold. People die because of it, but they should be left to their own devices?

If bars can't handle running background checks or setting up cameras they agreed to do, why should they be trusted? This one was supposed to bring something he's had a year to prepare and didn't. Imagine a place like that, except we don't have to. Will admits it was so dangerous that innocent people deserve to be murdered for walking by that place.

When taxes are split among everyone in Boston, how much are we looking to save here by replacing this person with Will, and what's the benefit?

Oh boy, we saved half a penny a year, and our son was murdered instead because of incompenetent hellholes that can't handle basic business and are allowed to be places we assume to be deadly to walk by.

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Because guns exist, and they exist whether this (or any) pouring establishment is permitted to do business or not.

I'm not afraid enough to die by gun at a bar to have this woman make an obscene amount of money while scolding people who didn't have problems until government said they did. I'm sorry that you're fearful of gun violence to this degree. That's justifiable.

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When you actually do things you said you would do in a voluntary agreement. Government didn't force them to open a bar. If they didn't like the terms of the agreement, that's the bar's problem for signing it. They are voluntarily entering into an agreement they disagree with? That sounds like a whole lot of the bar's problem. Also, they didn't follow the security protocols they agreed to, so the government was simply enforcing something the bar agreed was fair. If the bar didn't voluntarily decide to open a sleezy place, or actually had real security, those existing guns would have fired bullets less people.

You see, the security footage may have got visuals or license plates of the culprits. Then when they hand them to the police, they can make arrests and the people firing those guns get removed from that access and placed in a place called prison. Since they mysteriously provide any footage, they are actively helping criminals go free (to shoot at the bar another day.)

I pay more at the grocery store rounding up my change to feed people on continents I dont live on. Pennies on the dollar a year to stop murders in my city is well worth it. Not to mention all the ones that were avoided by bars actually taking responsibility for their own actions.

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Why give the grocery store a write-off?

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The cashier asks and I say yes. This is on top of my chosen direct charity donations which would cost me more to itemize in tax than taking the standard deduction, so why go through all the trouble of snubbing a place I get my food at, so I can pull up a website and donate 41 cents when I get home? How much do you donate,BTW?

Are you going to not answer in the same way you couldn't refute any of my points and deflected to giving money to charity?

So I help out a grocery store, and a charity, and other charities-- that's bad.

But chanpioning businesses that cause and cover up murders is all good, right?

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If you’re that doggedly determined to win a morality war, then sure. Happy Thanksgiving.

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Just by reading the news over the years, I get the impression that Linden Street is in general -- not just with respect to this violent dive bar -- the most crime-ridden street in Allston. Not sure why.

I don't think we need any nightclub/bar there, especially one connected in any way whatsoever, even indirectly, with this nightmare owner.

What we need is more apartments, with maybe a grocery store on the ground floor (because the prices at the local Star Market supermarket are beyond outrageous, compared to other markets).

However, I know of multiple places in the neighborhood, with a single-story retail structure there now, that were approved for multi-floor residential construction years ago, yet no construction ever took place, for some reason. For example, the CVS on Comm. Ave. got thrown out of their location years ago (which the store manager resented, I spoke to him), yet the former store has been closed and vacant ever since, lots of graffiti but no occupant and no construction.

So I take all these kinds of news stories with a grain of salt now.

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Harvard is just a block over - close enough to walk a little extra further because it feels safer. So there's a lot less "normal people" traffic up and down Linden to average out the sketch factor.

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But that means giving him six months to show that he is actually doing something with the license for the club, which has been closed since April, 2022 - when gunfire erupted outside the place, just hours after board Chairwoman Kathleen Joyce allowed it to re-open for the first time since it was ordered shut following a double shooting that may have sprung from a fight inside the club in November, 2021.

"It is quite unfair," board member Keeana Saxon said. "There are a lot of restaurants out there who would put [a liquor license] to good use."

Due to the way the state legislature limits the number of liquor licenses in Boston, the price of an all-alcohol license like the one Matov holds now approaches $600,000 on the open market.

It's shit like this that drives people to libertarianism.....

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As shown by how well libertarians do at getting elected here.

Oh, right, can't forget the closing /s

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Just look at what the free market has done to housing prices, with government doing jack (expletive) to help the layperson own a living space.

People in Massachusetts are quite libertarian, at least in that regard. They just don't vote that way.

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That closing will be a nightmare.

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