The Zoning Board of Appeal yesterday approved plans to convert a long empty hall on Blue Hill Avenue and Angell Street, across from Talbot Avenue in Dorchester, into a new Dominican restaurant, function hall and nightclub called El Punto.
The 240-seat El Punto was awarded a full liquor license in 2023, but needed zoning-board approval for the “non-conforming” use of live music.
Yira Peña, the restaurant’s chief operating officer, agreed to conditions that the place close at 11 p.m. on week nights and at 1 a.m. on weekends and that it hold monthly meetings with neighbors on quality-of-life issues, give residents emergency contact numbers and hire security and valet companies. Earlier, El Punto had also agreed not to run both the restaurant and the function hall at the same time.
Board member Katie Whewell moved to approve the zoning request, saying Blue Hill Avenue “is a major commercial corridor,” making it “an appropriate location for this use.” The board voted 6-1 in favor.
City Councilor Brian Worrell and the Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council also voiced support – conditioned on the facility sticking to its agreements on security, parking and not operating both the restaurant and function hall at the same time.
Residents of Angell Street and Vesta Road on the other side of Blue Hill Avenue, however, were having none of it.
They told the board they have worked hard to keep their street a quiet, peaceful place in which to raise a family, that they already have problems with people parking there for late-night parties at Franklin Park at the other end of the street and that they saw nothing good coming of having a nightclub spilling out drunken customers at 1 a.m. onto their street. They also doubted El Punto’s valet company would actually find enough off-street spaces in the area in which to park patrons’ cars.
“Residential zones are intended for peaceful living,” one resident said. “Sometimes, I can’t even come home because there’s no place to park” because of the Franklin Park parties, Mary Greenaway of Angell Street said.
Kimberly Anderson, also of Angell Street, said she was concerned about parking and trash from late-night customers, but added she also worries about safety: “We’re going to have so many different people walking up and down Angell Street at night, intoxicated, they’re going to want hang out, and they going to be hanging out on Angell Street.”
Alan Langham, the sole zoning-board member to vote against the proposed change, asked Peña if she and El Punto co-owner Wandaly Ortiz could open a restaurant and forego the nightclub part of it, because a club would bring a different sort of customer to the area.
Peña, however, said that the 240-seat occupancy- down from the 351 first proposed – includes a function hall and that the city would consider anything with more than 50 seats a nightclub, anyway.
