LET OUR CLAIMS DEPARTMENT
COLLECT FROM THE RESPONSIBLE
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.
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A short drive thru the Battery Tunnel from Manhattan
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 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 boozeslinging
colleagues, claiming
his four-hour tours to and from
the Statue of Liberty are monitored
by a top-notch security
outfi t headed by 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