Plans for a new kind of quiet club in Boston slow down as the Allston space's current liquor-license owner gets in more hot water with the city

For more than a year now, Stephen Rosenberg, Lukas McCarthy and Jhayson Hardy have been building a novel kind of Boston club: A place that would play hi-fidelity music, but at low enough volumes where you could still have a conversation, through hand-built and vintage sound components in a venue that would be a "safe space" for everybody from members of the LGBTQ+ community to people with mobility issues to just people who want a place to hang out or even do school work during the day.

Looking on LoopNet, which lists available commercial space in the Boston area, they found the perfect spot: A former club in an old garage and office building on an Allston side street that was both large enough for what they wanted to do - it could hold 250 to 350 people - and could be re-molded to their specs.

Equally attractive, its owner already had a liquor license he could sign over to them - important because while the main focus would be on the music and social connecting, liquor sales would provide enough of a revenue boost to make the place sustaining, to attract investors, even, they said in a recent interview at Lulu's, a couple blocks away from the space.

Sound Logic, already known in Boston hi-fi circles for their shows, signed a five-year lease and began renovations - and lease payments - for their planned Sound Logic Social Club.

Rosenberg, who has a background in construction in addition to a love of speakers, has been overseeing creation of a "listening bar" - a venue built around hi-fi music, often from old-school vinyl, played through vintage speakers or equipment he and his partners are building by hand. The goal is to open up the mid-range of music and sounds, music that is meant to be "listened to and enjoyed," sound that is lost in the typical club environment built around pumping out body-vibrating base and ear-piercing high notes, he said.

Along with that would come a calming design meant to encourage people to hang out. The club would have no traditional beefy scowling bouncers, they said, but would instead have staffers - employed by the club, not a third-party company - trained in de-escalation to help defuse any problems, and who, at the end of the night, would help escort patrons to their rides.

Restrooms would be gender neutral; Rosenberg said they'd already begun working making one completely ADA compliant. Sound panels would help ensure the music doesn't escape the club and bother neighbors.

And for all the alcoholic beverages they hope to sell, they're also planning a menu mocktails and soft drinks. They added there will be no VIP section, no bottle service, no attempts to gin up a reputation as a place to be by creating long lines outside by slowing admission.

They'd gotten far enough along on construction that they'd begun looking for employees, and chronicling their project on their Instagram page.

But now they're paying rent on a space that might not be able to use because it turns out that the liquor license is at least temporarily, and possibly permanently, unavailable - suspended by a Boston Licensing Board tired of dealing with repeated shootings and gun battles at what was until last year the Garage nightclub. The board has planned a hearing in May on permanently revoking the the club's liquor license.

Hardy, Rosenberg and McCarthy said that Garage owner Alex Matov told them he wasn't using his liquor license because he planned to knock the whole building down to replace it with a 349-unit apartment building, but that he'd been unable to start work because of increases in interest rates and construction costs, so he figured he'd rent out the space to a new operator until the financial picture changed. In fact, their lease contains an extension clause that is subject to cancellation should Matov arrange the financing to re-start his apartment plans.

But they say what Matov didn't tell them was that even as he was going through the BPDA and zoning-board process to win approval for apartments, he was having his liquor license suspended by the licensing board - twice in just a few months.

The three said they only found out in October that the Boston Licensing Board suspended its liquor license indefinitely in May, 2022, after the latest gunfire in its parking lot.

"We had no idea," Hardy said.

That gunfire, in which nobody was injured, came just a couple days after the board had agreed to let the club re-open for the first time since November, 2021, when two people were shot, one in the face, outside the club - an incident that came after several other gun-related incidents at or next to the club dating to at least 2016, after Matov transformed what had once basically been a somnolent dinner spot for Russian emigres into a louder hip-hop club.

Board members were irate not just because of the gunfire but by what they considered a failure by Matov to cooperate with police by handing over any video the club might have - which he apologized for and blamed on what he said was the one guy having access to the surveillance system not being around.

Then, last month, came another shock: After Matov initially told the licensing board he would sell the liquor license and would have no say in its use, he returned to the board about three weeks later and said no, he would retain ownership of the license, and would instead basically lease it to Sound Logic, surprising not only board members, but one of his own attorneys.

The board, which has made it clear it no longer trusts Matov - police say they have still not gotten any video from the November, 2022 incident - said, no, they're not going to allow him to have anything to do with a license at that location. They voted to wait the required six months for a revocation hearing to take away the license and give it to somebody else, in a city where full-liquor licenses are now in such short supply they can go for $600,000 on the open market.

That leaves Sound Logic in a pickle, one on which they say they've already spent $500,000: If the board does revoke Matov's license, there's no guarantee they would get it - the board could decide to grant it to any of the numerous other applicants it has already approved for liquor licenses even though it had none to give out.

For now, the three are slowly continuing their renovation work, using material they'd already purchased before they learned about the status of the liquor license.

Partially finished interior:

They're hoping they can work out a deal in which Matov agrees to sell them the liquor license outright before he possibly loses it entirely in May - and to then convince the licensing board to approve their purchase with him out of the legal picture.

But they're also looking at possible alternatives that would let them open a sustainable club without a liquor license. Hardy said they've already talked to Boston's official nightlife czar, Corean Reynolds, about the idea of opening Sound Logic as an all-night, alcohol-free club, sort of similar to the old Rise Club on Stuart Street, which stayed open all night for some 15 years before closing permanently in 2015.