Liquor-license musical chairs held up due to lawsuit

The Boston Licensing Board today took no action on requests by the owners of Boston Chops on Washington Street in the South End to sell their liquor license to a proposed parmigiana-based restaurant in Copley Place - and to then transfer the liquor license from their closed Boston Chops on Temple Place downtown to the Washington Street restaurant - because of a lawsuit by their Temple Place landlord.

Brian Piccini and Christopher Coombs's Temple Place landlord, Zaiter Investments, LLC, sued their BUH2, LLC last week in Suffolk Superior Court. A hearing on its request for a preliminary injunction to block the transfer of the restaurant's largest single asset, its liquor license, is scheduled for Monday, according to court records.

The licensing board voted to wait until after the resolution of that hearing before taking any action on his request to let him move the liquor license to his Washington Street restaurant - and to sell that restaurant's existing license to Parm, an Italian restaurant proposed for what is now an empty space on the Southwest Corridor side of Copley Place.

Piccini and Coombs face a separate suit, filed last year, by a company that finances restaurant equipment.