Revere bar owners vow rollback fight

REVERE – Owners of four local bars vowed this week to pursue legal challenges to the city’s new 1 a.m. closing time for liquor serving establishments after losing initial court bids to block the rollback.City solicitor Paul Capizzi said judges rejected requests by the Esquire, Shipwreck, Squire and The Cove to block enforcement of the 1 a.m. closing time. The rollback went into effect Tuesday.”The court sided with us and would not allow an injunction,” Capizzi said, adding that the Esquire and Shipwreck are pursuing a challenge to the rollback in state Superior Court while the Squire and The Cove have filed a complaint alleging due process violations in the city’s decision to implement the rollback.”For the moment, the decision on the rollback stands,” Capizzi said, referring to the Feb. 21 License Commission vote approving the rollback.Commission Chairman Michael Pepe and fellow commissioners Thomas Henneberry and Linda Guinasso listened for 80 minutes at a January hearing while a half dozen police officers and elected officials spoke in favor of the rollback and a half dozen bar owners spoke against it.Local bar owners argued the rollback would saddle them with economic hardships. They said the commission should continue to exercise its authority to roll back bars’ hours on a case-by-case basis.A Peabody police officer at the January rollback hearing said that the city’s decision three decades ago to set an earlier closing time reduced traffic accidents.Prior to the February vote Pepe said his vote for the rollback was swayed in part by bar owner Dan Dillon’s comment at a Jan. 10 hearing that the “transformation of a customer from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. (was like) Jekyll and Hyde.”The vote leaves local early morning drinkers with Saugus and Boston as their destinations. Lynn’s Licensing Board rolled back closing time to 1 a.m. at the year’s start despite the objections of bar owners who mounted repeated legal challenges to the rollback.