New Pour House will be the same as the old Pour House, proposed new owner says

When the Pour House re-opens with a new manager, it will be exactly the same as patrons remember from the Before Times, an attorney for the proposed new liquor-license holder told the Boston Licensing Board today.

"We're not reinventing the wheel here," attorney Jon Aieta told the board, which has to decide whether to let the previous owners, who shut the Boylston Street bar at the start of the pandemic last year, sell their liquor license to landlord Charles Talanian. Talanian in turn would essentially lease the space to a management group headed by proposed new Pour House General Manager Charles Hitchcock, which would keep the same hours, the same breakfast, lunch and dinner offerings and even the same tables and chairs.

At a hearing today, the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay asked the board to defer any vote until after Talanian meets with the group on Dec. 6.

Talanian was already a part owner of the concern that had run the Pour House for 34 years until it shut in March, 2020 and declared bankruptcy. According to bankruptcy-court records, a new concern owned by Talanian will purchase the bar's liquor license and its other assets - including all the stuff that was on the walls right up until the day it closed - for $500,000.

Pour House was a part of a row of longstanding Boylston Street bars, all of which shut as the pandemic worsened. Plans are now in the work to re-open Lir, for which Talanian is buying the liquor license from the shuttered Marliave downtown, and McGreevy's, which, however, will re-open as an upscale "scratch" kitchen.