State College Borough Council on Monday approved a liquor license transfer for a planned downtown Italian restaurant with several conditions, including a restriction on how much alcohol it can sell.
A Philadelphia-based ownership group plans to open Figo Italian on the first floor of The Standard, 330 W. College Ave., and has an agreement to acquire the restaurant liquor license currently held by the former Luna 2 Woodgrill & Bar for 2609 E. College Ave. in College Township. Because the license is being transferred into the borough, council is tasked with approving or denying it and can attach conditions to the approval.
Among the conditions approved by council is a requirement that at least 60% of revenue for every two-year renewal period come from food sales, meaning alcohol sales can total no more than 40% of total revenue.
The restriction doesn’t seem as if it will impact plans to open the restaurant. Tim Lu, one of Figo Italian’s owners and a Penn State graduate, told council during a public hearing in April that he expected at least 70% of revenue would come from food.
Attorney Mark Kozar of the firm Flaherty & O’Hara, which is representing the ownership group on the license and has worked on many other transfer requests in Centre County, said on Monday his clients in this case did not object to the condition.
“I personally don’t like food-beverage percentage,” Kozar said. “However, in this case, my client is fine with it because they are doing 75-25, so I have no opposition to it. That doesn’t mean that next time I’m up here I wouldn’t oppose it.”
Other conditions attached to the license approval include:
• Alcohol sales not permitted when food is not available for purchase.
• Alcoholic beverages can be sold in containers no larger than 22 ounces.
• The license cannot be expanded beyond the approved premises or transferred to another owner or location within the borough without approval by council.
When the Pennsylvania Liquor Code was amended in 2002 to allow intermunicipal transfers within a county, it included a requirement for the receiving municipality’s approval when it has more than one restaurant liquor license per 3,000 population. While State College’s numbers have fluctuated, it has always been above the quota during that time, and today has 1.8 per 3,000 people, with 23 restaurant liquor licenses. In total, the borough has 42 retail establishments selling alcohol under various licenses, including 36 within five blocks of 330 W. College Ave., Gardner said.
State College had historically appended a food-alcohol percentage restriction on the few licenses that have been transferred into the borough, but council declined to include the condition on the last two approvals: one in 2019 for the proposed Queenstown restaurant that never opened at the corner of East College Avenue and South Pugh Street, and the other in February of this year for Brothers Bar & Grill, which plans to open at 134 S. Allen St.
Given those decisions, police chief John Gardner did not include the food-alcohol ratio in his recommendations to council at the public hearing for the Figo license in April.
Council President Jesse Barlow said during a work session discussion of the license on April 10 that Figo was “less of a candidate” for the restriction than Brothers was. But several council members said that while they did not have concerns about Figo specifically, they worried about not having a guiding vision for how to handle liquor license transfers into the borough.
“If we focus on the specific business, there’s almost nothing that we’re going to turn down because they all have a good story,” council member Peter Marshall said during the work session. “… I don’t think we should look, at this point, at the individual businesses. I think we should look at the big picture. That’s our responsibility as a council. Look at the big picture and how it affects the borough and how it affects downtown. We’ve already said that there’s a real case that additional restaurant bars that sell alcohol have a negative effect on the welfare of State College.”
Marshall cited statistics provided by Gardner, such as that police calls to restaurants with liquor licenses are 16 times higher than other properties, and the high density of alcohol-serving establishments in the downtown. He noted that the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism recommends restricting the density of retail alcohol outlets as a strategy for addressing dangerous drinking among college students.
Filling vacant commercial space downtown in a way that will attract non-students was another concern, Marshall said. Though Figo is billed as an “upscale” Italian restaurant and entrees at its Philadelphia location range from $24 to $40, Marshall, for reasons he did not articulate, called it a “bar restaurant” and implied it would not be enticing for non-students.
“When you think about State College and the downtown, it’s turning into a restaurant alcohol downtown,” Marshall said. “That’s what it’s turning into. That’s not good. We’re talking about filling some of the vacant spaces. This is filling a vacant space and that’s a plus. But what are we filling them with? We need things that will bring non-students to the downtown. When students are gone, the businesses have a hard time in the summer, those that depend on students. We need people downtown and one of the reasons we don’t have people downtown is we’re turning into a student downtown.”
Borough council and staff have expressed some urgency about facilitating the leasing of empty commercial spaces, particularly in newer high-rises. The borough’s planning director said last year that there is about 200,000 square feet of vacant new commercial space in mostly unfinished “gray-shell” condition. He estimated the cost of fitting out all of that space at nearly $30 million.
“Keeping in mind that there is a lot of vacant space in our downtown State College and we have an opportunity to recruit a new business into our community I think is indeed a plus,” council member Deanna Behring said at the work session discussing the Figo license.
“It does lend to a conversation about how we build our downtown business community, but I also wonder about the timing of having that conversation and allowing continued liquor licensing while we do this. When is enough enough, and I don’t know that we can continue doing these individual licensing decisions without some broader kind of guideposts for decision making.”
What to Expect from Figo
The group planning to open Figo Italian owns and operates multiple restaurants in the Philadelphia area under GLU Hospitality, including the only current Figo restaurant.
Kozar said at the public hearing last month that Figo’s menu and price points mean it will not be a student bar.
Figo will be a full-service Italian restaurant with a bar and separate side for a fast casual pizza counter.
Its menu “pays homage to traditional Italian classics with a modern twist,” Kozar said, and “features a wide variety of antipasto, salad, pizzas, pasta specialties, steak, chicken and salmon entrees.” The owners plan to offer brunch and dinner menus, wine, beer and cocktails, as well as pizzas and sandwiches.
Lu said the menu changes seasonally to offer different items but not in scope.
The restaurant will have table/booth and bar seating. A total capacity has not been disclosed, but the bar is expected to seat 35.
Anticipated hours of operation are noon to midnight Monday through Thursday, noon to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday and noon to 10 or 11 p.m. on Sunday, according to the liquor license application.
Figo’s owners also are planning to open a breakfast and lunch spot called Bagels & Co. with no alcohol service in a separate space at The Standard.
