NORTHAMPTON — John Piskor waited on the Zoom call with bated breath. Annie Lesko, the city’s administration, licensing and economic development coordinator, had begun a lottery process to determine whether or not Piskor’s downtown Gombo restaurant would receive a highly coveted all-alcohol liquor license, a decision that could make or break a fledgling new restaurant.

During Wednesday’s License Commission meeting, Lesko placed two balls, one red and one yellow, into a wooden contraption resembling a lottery drawing machine. If the red ball was drawn, it would mean Piskor would get his license. If the yellow ball came up, it would mean the license would go to Masa Mexicano, a new Mexican restaurant on Pine Street.

“We had our fingers crossed,” Piskor said. “It was, in our minds, a last-ditch effort for us to get a liquor license.”

Lesko finally picked out a ball. Yellow. Piskor soon after logged off the meeting, feeling defeated.

But later that evening, Piskor got an email from Lesko that considerably brightened his mood: The License Commission still had one more all-alcohol license to give out, and rather than doing the normal lottery system, they would grant Piskor the license.

“We were over the moon and very grateful for their contribution,” Piskor said. “It’s important to note that it’s not an easy decision, but I think the commissioners did the right thing in this case.”

The determinations bring some closure to a roller-coaster that both Piskor and the License Commission have been on for the last several months, after the commission decided to force local real estate owner Eric Suher to sell off five liquor licenses that have sat mostly unused for years. The struggle has highlighted just how important these licenses are in a city like Northampton, where unique restaurants and a thriving cultural scene that attracts tourists are essential for the local economy.

At Masa Mexicano in Florence, owner Roberto Saravia knows he was lucky to be able to acquire a liquor license. Saravia opened his restaurant in December 2020, in the throes of the pandemic, and has a license to serve beer and wine alongside offerings of carne asada tacos and al pastor tortas. But he decided to pursue a license to meet an oft-requested demand for margaritas, along other well-known Mexican favorites like tequila.

“It’s an asset to me, it’s an asset to the business,” Saravia said of the license. “If it wasn’t for this, I probably would not be able to afford one, buying one privately.”

Like other Massachusetts municipalities, Northampton has a quota system for how many liquor licenses it can issue, and the city has reached its capacity. The only way a new business can acquire one is to either purchase one from an existing owner, or if a business closes and their license returns to the License Commission, which then can be given out at its discretion, usually through a lottery.

In November, the city managed to acquire seven additional over-quota licenses through an act in the state Legislature, the last two of which were given to Gombo and Masa Mexicano.

The commission had been trying to force Suher to part with his licenses for more than a year, after originally revoking his license for the shuttered Pearl Street Nightclub. The commission and Suher then came to an agreement where he would either sell or reopen his music venue establishments and transfer their licenses. Piskor had entered an agreement with Suher to purchase one of his licenses, but Suher was unable to provide a state tax certificate of good standing required to make the license valid.

Saravia said he had been too wary of doing business with Suher to enter negotiations directly with him for a license, but was glad both he and Piskor managed to get what they wanted in the end.

“I’m happy that it worked out,” Saravia said. “I technically won the lottery, but they [Gombo] also won in the aspect that they were able to acquire the other one that was available.”

State reforms stall

Piskor said the issues over liquor licenses go beyond the city, and have to do with the way the state imposes quotas on cities and towns through the commonwealth’s Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission.

“They’re putting a damper on new entrepreneurs,” he said of the current laws. “Our representatives and our senators and the governor should be thinking about how they can reform it, so that way they’re not putting people and in this case, the commission, in a situation where they have to pick and choose who they decide to get a license.”

Efforts at the state level to reform liquor license policies have mostly stalled. In January, Gov. Maura Healey announced the Municipal Empowerment Act, a bill that promised to give municipalities more control over certain permitting and tax options, with the ability to opt out of liquor license quotas teased as one such example. But the final version of the bill did not include such a measure.

Northampton state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, who helped secure the over-quota licenses for Northampton, said the decision to not include the opt-out in the final version of the bill stemmed from the the way some businesses in the state have utilized their licenses, which can cost more than six figures, to help their bottom line.

“The issue is that these licenses have value, so some businesses use them as leverage for things like securing a loan,” Sabadosa said in an interview. “They’ve used it as a building block for their business, and an opt-out would change their financial picture.”

Several bills, mostly in the form of home-rule petitions, also have been filed in the Legislature to curb license cap restrictions, but Sabadosa said such bills were unlikely to pass for that same reason. “It’s tough to balance those converging interests,” she said.

Piskor said he planned to talk with industry groups such as the Massachusetts Restaurant Association to see if anything could be done to help change the laws.

“I want to see if there’s anything I can do to help other people,” he said. “People need to be a voice farther than Northampton.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.