Last call for Lynn bars?

LYNN – Tricia Reid has owned and run Molly’s Irish Pub on Lewis Street for five years.But she closed down this week after three futile years of trying to survive since former Mayor Edward “Chip” Clancy rolled back the closing time for bars and restaurants in the city from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m.Reid, who has done everything from tend bar, to cook, to wash dishes to try to help her business survive, finally gave up this week, even after investing her life savings in the bar.”I went through absolute hell for three years,” she said during an interview Tuesday with a group of restaurant and bar owners inside her darkened bar. “It really stinks that I lost all this money, but the bleeding is over. This is an actual relief.”There’s no doubt, Reid believes, that her business failed because of the rollback.Pointing to a desk calendar that showed how much money she took in on any given night, Reid noted how business has dropped since the rollback took effect in January 2008.”Before the rollback, I made more money on one Friday night than I do now in 14 days,” she said. ” ? My overhead is about $10,000 a month. I’m not making my overhead and it’s a direct result of the rollback.”The rollback has been particularly harmful to bar and restaurant owners because it came as the economy was going into the tank, the owners said Tuesday.” ? People aren’t spending as much money,” Reid said. “The few that are coming, aren’t spending as much.”Rocco “Rocky” DiFillipo, owner of the Brick Yard Bar and Grill and vice president of the Lynn Restaurant Association, says the indifference shown to them by city officials sunk to a new low when they couldn’t even convince the city’s License Commission to push back closing time on New Year’s Eve from 1 a.m. to 2 p.m.”I personally can’t understand why they just don’t give it to us,” he said Tuesday. “It’s one hour. It’s New Year’s Eve. Surrounding cities are giving them (other bar owners) to 2, 3 in the morning. How can we get any customers into our place when they drop the ball at midnight and last call is at 12:30. Who in their right mind is going to come here?”DiFillipo and the other restaurant owners feel they have been unfairly singled out by city officials.”We’ve had the same restaurant and bar in Lynn for 50 years and I’ve never been through what I’ve been through in the last three years,” he said. “Before the rollback took effect, I had 90 customers in my bar on a Friday or Saturday night, now I have 20 to 25 if I’m lucky.”But if restaurant and bar owners in the city are hoping the city’s License Commission will push back the closing time, it seems extremely unlikely.Commission member Richard Coppinger, the brother of Police Chief Kevin Coppinger, said Tuesday he believes the subject is closed.Coppinger said the commission accepted the petition that the restaurant association submitted for its files, but took no action on it, effectively denying it.”I think it’s very effective and very positive,” Coppinger said about the rollback. “And when you speak to city residents, they say things are better now. I don’t see a reason to debate it anymore.”He believes the later closing time created a host of public-safety issues, including drunk driving and fight calls.”I think it has stopped the influx of people coming into the city at last call,” he said.An influx at last call?Commission Chairman Patricia Barton said she would have supported the request to push back closing time on New Year’s Eve to 2 a.m., but like the board’s other two members, continues to oppose moving the city’s closing time back permanently.”It’s a public-safety issue,” she said. “It’s been proven that crime has gone down.”When asked about how the rollback has hurt local restaurant owners, she said, “I fully understand their frustration, but I do believe that public safety has to come first.”Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy could not be reached for comment Wednesday.But, in a statement, she said, “In my opinion, on a holiday night such as New Year’s Ev