Cyril’s Agrees to Nix Bar, Limit People, Reduce Seating

You will still be able to buy its signature drink, the B.B.C. (Banana Bailey’s Colada), at Cyril’s Fish House, the popular roadside bar and restaurant on Napeague, in the coming season, but you might want to arrive early: The owners of the property have agreed to limit the number of patrons on the grounds at any one time and to make numerous modifications to the building and grounds.

That the modifications, negotiated between the town and the property owners, are coming to the town planning board for site plan review is significant given that they have been locked in a legal battle since 2013 and that a criminal trial is looming in Town Justice Court.

The negotiated agreement is described in a memo to the planning board, which was scheduled to discuss it last night, following an executive session with town attorneys. The board, which has the final say, is likely to need some convincing, however, since members quickly rejected a revised site plan earlier this year.

Eric Schantz, a senior Planning Department official, prepared the memo for the planning board. According to Mr. Schantz, the bar that faces Montauk Highway and “other structures,” such as a brick patio between the restaurant and the roadway, will be gone. A bar on the west side of the building will become a 10-foot-long counter. In addition, “the canopy, portions of the deck, and stone seating area on the western side of the building will be removed.”

A “30-by-30 foot long outdoor area for patrons, cordoned off from the parking lot through a combination of fencing and vegetative screening” will replace the bar and patio.

There will be only 62 seats, 36 outdoors and 26 indoors, a number that appeared to be in place in 1984 and complies with a ruling by State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti in 2014 in a lawsuit brought by the town against Cyril’s.

The number of people at the property at one time is to be limited to 150, including employees. There will be a minimum of 21 parking spaces on the half-acre lot.

“The Planning Department considers these changes a substantial improvement to the site’s impacts,” Mr. Schantz wrote. “A significant improvement to public safety is anticipated, primarily through the removal of the front bar and the restricting of patrons to an area at the interior of the site and off of Montauk Highway.”

Also to be removed are several structures behind the restaurant, now used for storage. Storage will be limited to two 8-by-20 foot structures, plus a garbage compactor and a grease bin. According to Mr. Schantz, the changes were done in consultation with the town attorney’s office.

The property is zoned for residential use but  commercial use is allowed because its existence predates the town code. However, the town has insisted that Cyril’s has far exceeded the scope of what was in place in 1984, when the applicable sections of the code were written.

Ruling in 2014 on the town’s lawsuit against Cyril’s in State Supreme Court, Justice Farneti listed many of the structures whose removal is called for in the agreement as having been put up after 1984. He also found that if the matter were to go to civil trial, “the likelihood of success favors the town.” The suit was adjourned to allow the owners to go through site plan review, and to seek whatever variances would be needed to legalize the site.

In other legal action brought by the town, Debra Dioguardi Lakind, Michael Dioguardi, and Robert Dioguardi, who own the property, are scheduled to go on trial in Town Justice Court on Tuesday on 248 criminal counts related to the zoning code. Michael Sendlenski, the town attorney, said on Tuesday that the town was not willing to adjourn the case. Conrad Jordan, the attorney for the Dioguardis, did not return several calls to his office this week. 

Cyril Fitzsimons, who operates the bar and restaurant, is not named in the criminal complaint. The charges are all violations of the zoning code, such as lack of building permits and certificates of occupancy. Many of the charges are misdemeanors, punishable by up to six months in jail as well as a $1,000 fine. According to the State Liquor Authority, even one conviction, on a lack of a certificate of occupancy, could lead to the loss of his right to sell alcohol.