West Village Residents Oppose Private Padel Club

Padel may have fans everywhere from Brooklyn to Billionaires’ Row, but West Village residents won’t allow a new private members’ club hinged on the sport to get a liquor license without a fight.

Roughly 30 people living in the neighborhood rallied against the proposal for 120 Leroy Street, which includes a rooftop restaurant and three padel courts, at a meeting with the state’s liquor licensing authority on Thursday.

Among their concerns, residents, brandishing signs reading “No Rooftop Restaurant” and “No Private Padel,” claim the project would drive noise up and add traffic and congestion to the largely residential area.

“The community has been asking for a year, ‘Let us see your plans,’” said Massimo D’Angelo, an attorney representing a group of residents, who argued the team behind the project — including clothing designer Ronnie Fieg, the Cayre family’s Midtown Equities and the owners of Cafe Mogador — has been reluctant to share information with residents concerned about the plans.

D’Angelo added that 450 local residents signed a petition opposing the project.

The authority denied a temporary permit for the premises and ordered the team behind the project to amend the application. Chair Lily Fan rebuked the applicants for failing to negotiate a solution.

“Do something reasonable so that people will welcome you,” Fan said. She added that without the neighborhood’s support, “I don’t see how your business is going to survive.”

“Convincing me is not a win,” Fan added. “That’s just the beginning. It’s these 450 people you have to convince”

The clash at the meeting was the latest development in a contentious saga between neighborhood residents and spearheads of the project, which is described as a private members’ club with spa, wellness, padel facilities and a restaurant. The restaurant is open to members of the public with a $50 cover charge.

Plans for the building initially included a rooftop bar, though an attorney for the owners, Donald Bernstein, said zoning wouldn’t allow it. The developers instead pivoted to a rooftop extension of the restaurant and agreed not to allow any background music.

At the hearing, Bernstein said his clients would amend their application to exclude the restaurant’s rooftop extension and would seek only to license the restaurant on the floor below.

An architect for the project said at the hearing that the developers had invested $7 million in the project so far and that construction was about halfway finished with an expected completion in September or October this year — though residents strongly objected to his characterization of the progress.

“That’s bullshit,” one resident yelled from the back of the room.

Another said, “We have eyes, you know.”

When members of the authority asked attendees to quiet down, another added, “Someone needs to point out that he’s lying.”

But Bernstein dismissed their comments.

“Money has been spent. Construction is being done,” he said.

Bernstein urged the authority to disregard the community’s objections to noise from the padel court, as the liquor license, if granted, would only apply to the restaurant and its rooftop extension, before he agreed to scrap it.

“Whatever issue and complaints they have about the padel courts, this is not the right [venue] for it,” Bernstein said.

Fieg, Michael Cayre and a representative for the Mogador owners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The throwdown over the proposal began heating up last spring, when the developers applied for a liquor license and outlined their plans for the property’s roof and ninth floor. The fight was first reported by the New York Post,

In the application, the team laid out its vision: a private members club with a spa, restaurant run by the acclaimed East Village restaurateurs, padel courts and a rooftop lounge with background music and the occasional DJ. The club, open from 7 a.m. until midnight, would allow non-members for a $50 fee and up to 20 private parties a year.

Residents quickly rose up to block the plans. In May, members of Community Board 2, which includes Greenwich Village and the West Village, voted 33 to 1 to oppose the project, urging the SLA to deny the license application.

“Noise pollution from this type of venue would be detrimental,” a couple with an eight-month-old child living at 421 Hudson Street wrote in a letter opposing the license. “A rooftop venue

with padel courts, alcohol, and loud music/live DJ all day until 12 a.m. every night of the

week is not at all in line with the character of this area.”

Another resident of the condo building objected to the project, claiming it would add “noise, drunken rowdiness, and crime to our lovely area.”

But the board’s vote was a suggestion, not a mandate, and the developer’s application continued to move forward, with residents pushing back each step of the way.

The following month, two state legislators, whose districts include neighborhoods near 120 Leroy, also wrote a letter to the SLA, encouraging them to deny the property’s liquor license. In the letter, State Senator Brian Kavanaugh and Assemblymember Deborah Glick pointed to residential buildings surrounding the property.

“Most problematic is the rooftop bar and lounge,” Kavanaugh and Glick wrote in the letter, arguing it “would significantly increase the noise level experienced by these residents on a daily basis and late into the evening.”

Despite residents’ vehement protests, by the end of the summer, signs pointed toward the license’s approval.

Since the project is near other establishments that sell alcohol, it’s subject to the 500 Foot Law, which means the authority must determine whether issuing the license would be in the “public interest.”

In August, a judge sided with the applicants in a report, ruling the proposal met the public interest burden and recommending the authority grant the license.

At a January hearing on the license, community members once again voiced their objections to the project, and SLA chair Lily Fan ordered the developers to confer with residents privately to come to a resolution.

But a February meeting between the parties was to no avail.

“The Applicants appeared for the February 22, 2025, Meet and Confer wholly unprepared and unwilling to foster a meaningful conversation with respect to the community members’ well documented and previously expressed concerns,” Massimo D’Angelo, an attorney representing a group of residents wrote to Fan last week.

Now it’s back to the drawing board for the project’s team, who will have to re-file their application for a liquor license without the rooftop portion. Even with a small win under their belt, residents don’t appear to be backing down from their position.

“Even if this proposed open-air padel stadium could be covered with a bubble, it would not be able to reduce the noise and lights that would disrupt this West Village residential community,” D’Angelo wrote in a statement.