8
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, APRIL 28, 2019
BY COLIN MIXSON
A seaman fl eeing the wreckage
of Sheepshead Bay’s outlawed
party-boat business faces community
opposition to his plan to
call Sunset Park’s Pier 4 his next
port of call, after neighborhood
civic gurus slammed the dock’s
existing party boat business as a
nuisance at a Community Board
7 meeting on April 17.
“Now that it’s become a party
boat pier, it’s fi lthy and it’s disgusting,”
said board member Joan
Botti. “I understand that they discovered
two dead bodies fl oating in
the water at the pier, so it seems to
be going downhill very fast.”
Tour boat operator Pete Guoba,
captain of the Sheryll Princess,
fi rst came to the board’s Public
Safety Committee on April 15 seeking
the group’s endorsement for
transferring his existing liquor
license from his dock on Sheepshead
Bay’s Emmons Avenue to
Pier 4, after the city’s Economic
Development Corporation offered
him a berth there in the wake of
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s call to forbid
party boat captains from boarding
passengers in the Southern
Brooklyn neighborhood.
De Blasio’s edict — which allows
party boats to dock, but not
board passengers in Sheepshead
Bay — followed area Assemblyman
Steve Cymbrowitz’s lobbying
efforts against the industry earlier
this year on behalf of community
members, who complained that
party boat patrons had become
a public nuisance, citing routine
tailgating ahead of cruises, and
late night rowdiness upon their
disembarkation.
But members of Community
Board 7 argued that Sunset Park’s
party boat scene is equally debauched,
and the local civic gurus
had only to point to the wild shooting
and police chase that devolved
from a dispute aboard a party boat
last year as evidence of the business’s
SAIL AWAY: Community Board 7 downvoted a Brooklyn captain’s scheme to move his tour-boat business from Sheepshead
Bay’s Emmons Avenue to Sunset Park’s Pier 4.
deleterious effect upon the
neighborhood.
And, true to Botti’s words, two
bodies did wash up beside Pier 4 in
March, although the police department
has not released any information
connecting those grisly fi nds to
the area’s party boat scene.
But a representative for Gouba
argued at Monday’s committee meeting
that he runs a tight ship, which
shouldn’t be lumped in with his
booze-slinging colleagues, claiming
his four-hour tours to and from the
Statue of Liberty are monitored by
a top-notch security outfi t headed by
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a veteran of the US Coast Guard and
that he always ensures his berths are
cleaned up at the end of a trip.
“This is a model, exemplary
licensee who’s done everything
by the book for 20 years,” said
Rosa Ruiz, a business consultant
representing Gouba in his
application.
And the chairwoman of Community
Board 15, the advisory
board that represents Sheepshead
Bay, said Gouba’s on the level, and
that the numerous complaints
surrounding that neighborhood’s
party boat business have never involved
the Sheryll Princess.
“He has really never been a
problem,” said Theresa Scavo.
But Scavo’s testimony, which
she phoned in to Community
Board 7’s District Manger Jeremy
Laufer ahead of last Wednesday’s
full board meeting, wasn’t
enough to sway members of the
other community board, which
voted overwhelmingly against
Guoba’s application.
The community board’s vote is
advisory, and it’s up to the State Liquor
Authority to decide whether
or not to give Guoba his transfer.
Ship wrecked
Civic leaders capsize tour-boat
captain’s plan to set sail for S’Park
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