BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Sean Sweeney, a member of Community Board 2 and the director of the Soho Alliance, recently reached an agreement with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board to pay a fine of more than $3,000 for taking a free one-year membership at the Meatpacking District Soho House.
In 2003, Soho House, a private-membership club, opened on Ninth Ave. in the Meatpacking District, within C.B. 2. Since then, Soho House has had several matters before C.B. 2 relating to State Liquor Authority licensing.
Sweeney, in the final “disposition,” as it’s called, with COIB, states that around March 2005, Chris Sade, Soho House’s president, contacted him regarding a plan to install awnings on Soho House’s roof. Sweeney was then chairperson of the C.B. 2 Landmarks Committee. Soho House is in the landmarked Gansevoort Historic district. Sade wanted to know if the proposed work would comply with landmark regulations and what Sweeney’s committee would think of it.
“At Sade’s invitation, I went to Soho House in my C.B. 2 capacity and met with Sade regarding the proposed work,” Sweeney states in the disposition. “My girlfriend accompanied me…since we planned to have a dinner date nearby that evening. After Sade and I finished discussing the proposed roof work, Sade offered to give us a tour of the building. Near the end of the tour, my girlfriend complained aloud that she was hungry and requested that we both go to dinner soon, as I had promised her. Sade suggested that we have dinner as his guest, and I accepted his offer. Neither my girlfriend nor I paid for our meal.
“During the dinner,” Sweeney further avers in the disposition, “I discussed Soho House membership with Sade, who told me that he would recommend me for membership and gave me an application. Thereafter, I submitted a membership application and was accepted as a member.
“Although I never asked for or sought a complimentary membership in Soho House, Soho House did not charge me a registration fee and did not send me an invoice, effectively providing me a complimentary membership for 2005,” Sweeney states in the agreement.
In 2006, the disposition notes, the Soho activist was a paying member of the club and recused himself from voting when a matter involving modification of Soho House’s liquor license came before C.B. 2.
Sweeney acknowledges to COIB that he “received a gratuity in violation of [the] City Charter…by accepting a complimentary meal and membership from an entity with potential matters before the community board that I served.”
In the agreement, COIB states that it is “aware of no evidence” that Sweeney’s acceptance of the gratuity was “undertaken with corrupt intent” or “resulted in an unwarranted advantage” for Soho House.
In the end, Sweeney agreed to pay COIB a fine of $3,192, equaling the estimated $1,192 cost of the one-year membership, plus a $2,000 penalty.
In a statement to The Villager, Sweeney said, “Despite an exhaustive two-year investigation, a team of investigators could not find a single shred of wrongdoing, or even intent, on my part. Because there was none. Indeed, the Conflicts of Interest Board admitted such.
“However, my membership in Soho House 10 years ago may have provided to some the ‘appearance’ of impropriety, which has now been addressed.”
After the one free year, Sweeney was a paying member of Soho for two years, after which he ended his membership.
When, in September 2013, The Villager interviewed David McWater the day before he resigned from C.B. 3, he angrily blasted Sweeney for having taken what McWater incorrectly called a free “three-year membership” at the Meatpacking Soho House, then turning around and publicly opposing Soho House’s application for a liquor license for its planned Ludlow St. location on the Lower East Side.
McWater had clashed with local anti-bar activists over the L.E.S. Soho House, among other liquor-license applications.
Last year, Jo Hamilton, a former C.B. 2 chairperson, agreed to pay COIB a fine of $10,660 for taking a free membership at the Meatpacking Soho House for 10 years. The fine included the estimated cost of a decade’s membership, plus a $2,500 penalty.
“People employed by Soho House are personal friends of mine, and they offered me the complimentary membership, which I accepted, in 2003,” Hamilton said.
She said the club annually renewed her complimentary membership until 2013.
Hamilton told COIB that her husband, William Hamilton, was a founding member of the club and did pay full membership dues. She also stated that, during their decade-long membership at the club, they both paid all charges for food, drink and services that they or their friends ordered.
As with Sweeney, COIB concluded there was no evidence of corruption on Jo Hamilton’s part in accepting the free membership or that it had resulted in an unwarranted advantage to Soho House.
