Robert Ehrlich, the businessman who created the Pirate’s Booty line of snack foods, is trying to collect enough signatures to force the Village of Sea Cliff to potentially allow his plans for a restaurant to move forward and bring more accountability to local government, Long Island Business News reported. If Ehrlich gets signatures from 5 percent of local voters in the last gubernatorial election, he could begin a permissive referendum against the village, which under state law could overturn or uphold specific decisions from a local governing body. For nearly two decades, local officials and the courts have thwarted Ehrlich’s efforts to open a new restaurant in Sea Cliff. In 2000, Ehrlich bough two vacant buildings on Roslyn Avenue for about $525,000 in order to open a cafe called the Sea Cliff Coffee Company in the smaller of the two, which has 1,200 square feet.
Three years later, Sea Cliff officials told Ehrlich that a 12-year-old agreement barred cooking there and would force the cafe to close at 3 p.m. each afternoon. Ehrlich moved ahead with an eatery anyway, only to be shut down in 2008 for not having the right permits. The years that followed have been marked by more squabbles with village officials. Ehrlich told LIBN that his legal battles have cost him more than $2 million. He has repeatedly butted heads with Sea Cliff’s administrator, Bruce Kennedy, who Ehrlich hopes to unseat with his referendum plan. In an effort to collect more signatures, Ehrlich started a websitewhere residents can attach their names to referendums that challenge village rulings. [LIBN]