THE WINE WARS: What is a Farm Winery License?
The farm winery license lets the holder do a great deal and tell the public almost nothing. That is why the town’s review matters. The Williams have avoided it for years.
The New York farm winery license is one of the most permissive the state issues. The holder can sell wine and other New York alcohol to the public by the glass, run up to five satellite tasting rooms at no extra fee, and, unlike almost every other licensee, alter the premises without first asking the State Liquor Authority for permission.
What sets it apart is what it does not require. A restaurant or bar must give the town thirty days’ written notice, with proof of mailing, before the SLA can act on the application. The farm winery is on the manufacturing track, which requires no notice to the town at all. The application is reviewed and approved in Albany. The neighbors are never told, because the law does not require it. The 500-foot rule that triggers a public hearing for crowded liquor outlets does not apply either.
So the only public review left is the local one. A nonresidential project like this requires site plan approval from the Chatham Planning Board, and that review is public: the meeting is open and the record is kept. It is also where the town’s own standards apply. Chatham’s code requires the Planning Board to find that the project will not unreasonably affect the value of adjacent property, and that its buildings, parking, and layout will not interfere with the use of neighboring land. On a narrow dirt road those are real questions: the traffic, the crowds late on summer nights, the parking, the stormwater and septic, and the value of the homes next door, which for most people is the largest thing they own. A commercial operation drawing crowds to the end of a residential lane can lower those values, and the review is where that gets weighed before the project is built rather than after. The broader the license, the more this one board is all that stands between the project and the people who live around it.
The Williams never notified their neighbors. They learned of the project on their own, opposed it on the record, and some have said they would consider selling rather than live beside it. The public review that would have aired all of this, and applied the town’s standards, never happened, because the Williams never let it.
The Williamses came to the Planning Board in September 2020. The board asked for detailed plans, a site visit, neighbor outreach, and proof of compliance with state rules. The Williams said they would follow up, then went quiet for nearly two years. When they returned in 2022 the documents still did not come. There were no environmental studies. The traffic study had been done in winter, before the season that would actually fill the road. The application lapsed and the town returned the escrow. The board never rejected the project. The Williams simply never let it decide. One incomplete application is an accident. A string of them is a strategy.
Then they changed buildings. Instead of finishing the Planning Board review, they had engineers file for a building permit on the tasting room, and it was granted. When that permit was challenged, the matter went to the Zoning Board of Appeals. The site plan review the Williams had avoided for years still has not happened. The only recourse left to anyone opposed is an Article 78 lawsuit, which costs the neighbors a lawyer and the Williams nothing.
The clearest fact is this. To get the license, the Williams had to file a complete plan of the facility with the state. The SLA application requires a diagram of every floor, with dimensions, every room labeled, entrances and exits marked, seating counted, outdoor areas drawn, and photographs. The plans exist. They were detailed enough to satisfy Albany. The one body never given a copy is the Chatham Planning Board, the only authority whose job is to examine the site in public before it opens. A facility documented for the state but not for the town next door has not been overlooked. It has been kept out of view.
The application is now pending with the state, filed in March on the manufacturing track. The state is moving. The local review has not happened, and on the current path it never will.
There is a next move, and it is no longer a matter of reading between the lines. At the most recent ZBA meeting, the Williams’ lawyer said they could go to the State Department of Agriculture and Markets to invalidate a decision that went against them. The threat has teeth. The property was enrolled in a state agricultural district, and Agriculture and Markets has the power to set aside local actions it finds unreasonably restrict a farm operation. It is the same move as before, scaled up. When a local body starts asking hard questions, reach over its head to a higher one that will not.
The legitimate venue for a project like this is the Planning Board, and it always was. The review the Williams have spent years avoiding is the one process built to weigh the plan in public, with the neighbors in the room, before anything opens. What needs to happen is straightforward. The Williams need to bring their plan before the Planning Board and submit to the same review every other applicant does, instead of routing around it through a building permit, an appeal to the ZBA, and a threat to take the matter to Albany. Left unchecked, that route ends with the people who live around 509 Bashford Road having had no say at all. A license this broad is only as safe as the local review behind it. The license tells no one. The Planning Board tells everyone and hears them back. The plan exists. It belongs in front of that board, in public, and the Williams are the ones who have to bring it there.
