Landlord of iconic New York bar defends lease wind-up

THE DUBLIN landlord of a well-known bar in Manhattan has defended the decision not to renew his tenant’s lease.

The closure of the bar, Bill’s Gay Nineties, on East 54th Street, the premises of which is owned by Irish tenor Anthony Kearns and Dublin publican and property developer Noel Tynan, has received extensive coverage in the US media.

“A bar that survived prohibition is set to be uprooted over a lease,” ran the headline in the New York Times. The piano bar first opened as a speakeasy in the 1920s during the Prohibition and was famous for its atmosphere and period bar furnishing.

The operators of the bar have not had their lease renewed and the Irish landlords have done a deal with a new tenant.

A dispute over the bar furnishings is set to be heard in the New York courts on April 10th.

The bar closed some weeks ago and its closure was recorded on US TV news programmes and in the New York Times and other newspapers.

“We’re not selling the building,” Mr Tynan told The Irish Times. He said he wanted to keep the bar the way it was, but had concerns the sitting tenant was going to introduce changes. He said the new tenants, whom he did not want to name, would renovate the large dining rooms on upper floors.

Filings in the New York Registry of Deeds show the five-storey building was bought by a company called Tynker 9 12 in December 2003 for $4.175 million (€3.186 million). The firm took a mortgage at the time from a bank called Country Bank for $2.1 million.

Mr Kearns is a member of the Irish Tenors group which has been very successful in the United States. He could not be contacted.

Mr Tynan owns the Celt Bar and Celtic Lodge on Talbot Street in Dublin. He is a friend and sometimes a business partner of Paddy Reilly, the man former taoiseach Bertie Ahern described as “Paddy the Plasterer” in a TV interview in 2006 when claiming he had received “dig-outs” from friends in the 1990s.

In 2007, then Sinn Féin MEP Mary Lou McDonald declared a €1,000 political contribution from Mr Tynan, who lives in Dublin Central. However, he said he was not a Sinn Féin supporter.

Mr Tynan has been involved in property ventures in Romania, including the proposed redevelopment of a large site in Bucharest that was cleared by former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

A company called the Royal Romanian Corporation was granted a concession to develop the land in 2003 and Mr Tynan later bought a substantial share in the company from its owner, Australian businessman Tony Mikhael.

However, the site has not been developed and former owners of the property have filed complaints against the Romanian government relating to the land’s seizure by Ceausescu.