The State Liquor Authority did not just bless a new owner for the address that used to be the Brooklyn Mirage. It handed Pacha New York a temporary license stapled to a list of conditions that reads like a charge sheet for everything the old club was accused of, starting with the name. Pacha legally cannot call the place the Mirage, and has to try to stop promoters and ticket sellers from using the name either.
That came after what Brooklyn Paper described as an often-thorny two-hour meeting, where SLA co-commissioners Edgar De Leon and John Maya voted to approve the license with strings attached. Music has to stop by 2 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 4 a.m. Thursday through Sunday, one show a night, with Narcan kept on hand and free buses and phone chargers written into the rules. The company also agreed to surrender Avant Gardner’s old liquor license, formally cutting the cord to the previous tenant.
The sharpest condition is aimed at the math. Pacha may not oversell tickets the way the Mirage did, or lean on projected “no-show rates” to slip past its occupancy limits, per Brooklyn Magazine, which reported outdoor parties capped around 5,300 and indoor events around 2,500, against the 7,850 the venue had proposed to hold across both. That cap is regulators answering a specific complaint, because the address has a record. At least three patrons died of accidental overdoses since Avant Gardner opened at the site in 2017, and at least 1,600 people were treated for intoxication or “altered mental state” from 2018 to mid-2022.
None of which made the neighbors comfortable. Residents who packed a Community Board 1 hearing stayed skeptical of the promises, citing the noise, the traffic, and crowds that “come in from other communities and they basically trash the neighborhood.” Kabir Mulchandani, CEO of Pacha’s parent FIVE Holdings, answered with a figure: a ten-year, $27 million plan to address what the commissioners and the community raised, plus, per Brooklyn Magazine, a separate $3 million for Brooklyn community projects.
So the global club brand did not get the rubber stamp a venue this size might expect. It got a probation. The temporary license keeps Pacha on a short leash while the conditions get tested against the first real summer of crowds, and the regulators kept the leverage to pull it.
The body that issued the license, and that can revisit it, is the New York State Liquor Authority Full Board, which posts its meeting calendar, agendas and decisions on its official site. That is where the conditions live, and where a Bushwick or East Williamsburg resident who wants to track whether Pacha keeps to them can watch the next review.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
