West Village residents are suing to prevent a Prohibition-era pub — where literary greats like Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer once guzzled grog — from reopening, claiming the area is already saturated with obnoxious drunks.
Almost 50 neighbors of Chumley’s at 86 Bedford St. slapped the bar and the New York State Liquor Authority with a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday.
“There is no analysis why the authority believed this bar is needed in this quiet, mid-block location and why it is in the public interest to open a 22nd drinking venue in an area besieged with problems from such establishments,” they griped.
But others — including longtime resident Kathryn Donaldson, head of the Bedford Barrow Commerce Block Association, a neighborhood advocacy group — say Chumley’s owner Jim Miller has always been a good neighbor.
“I feel so badly for him,” Donaldson said, adding that Miller, a retired firefighter, has been battling an alphabet soup of city agencies over renovations.
“It’s an institution, it’s been here forever, it’s a part of our history,” Donaldson said.
Chumley’s — which has been featured in an episode of “Mad Men” — shuttered in 2007 after 85 years in business when its facade crumbled onto the sidewalk. Before it closed, the landmark speakeasy hosted quite a different crowd from yesteryear; it was “a major destination for tourists, undergraduates and bar-hopping bridge-and-tunnel partygoers,” according to the suit.
The opposition group, Bar Free Bedford, wants the court to revoke the liquor license granted last October.
The local Community Board approved the liquor license renewal. The board reviews almost 15 liquor applications a year and of the 21 existing establishments surrounding Chumley’s at least six have opened since the pub shuttered.
Neither the SLA nor Chumley’s operator Jim Miller returned calls for comment.