Downtown brewpub hopes to open in Maverick Square building with a shaky past

Boston Magazine reports Democracy Brewing on Temple Place downtown, hopes to open a second location next year at 154 Maverick St. in East Boston - which has been home to several restaurants in recent years and the focus of a long-running, bitter battle between the now split couple who bought the former city Welfare building in 2011.

The worker-owned craft brewery won a city grant earlier this year to help it outfit its new location.

The space it will move into currently has a "neighborhood" liquor license, but the city license database has a notation: "TEMP CLOSED DO NOT ISSUE." In March, at its latest hearing on building owner John Tyler's latest citation for not actually using the license, the Boston Licensing Board voted to hold a hearing to revoke the license in six months, or this past September.

However, the board has apparently not held that hearing on the license, at which the board could consider taking back the license and handing it out to somebody else in one of the city's 21 Main Street districts, Roxbury, Dorchester or Mattapan. As a brewery, though, Democracy can apply for a separate license specifically for breweries.

Tyler and his ex-wife, Melissa, have been battling, often in court, over the restaurant space since their divorce in 2016. The licensing board has held a series of hearings on the space, which in recent years has been closed more often than not.

Tyler is also being sued by two restaurant operators who charge he booted them out of the space before they could open a new restaurant after he closed his in favor of a restaurant run by a one-time partner of theirs. In 2023, that restaurant opened - and then closed after just three months in business.