Queen of Sheba Toasts End of Liquor License Battle

Shaw’s Queen of Sheba restaurant has been attempting to secure a liquor license since April 2005. Yesterday, the license was finally granted. The resolution comes after over two years of feuding between Queen of Sheba and its chief opponent, Shiloh Baptist Church.

The Church, located opposite the Ethiopian joint on 9th St., resisted the restaurant’s license, citing the fact that the restaurant was within 400 feet from a school (Seaton Elementary) and right next door to the church’s own Child Development Center. Read up on the history of Shiloh and Sheba’s feud here.

ANC 2C01 Commissioner Alex Padro, a vocal supporter of Queen of Sheba in the battle for the license, had this to say:

“The church will say they opposed the license in the interest of community safety. But a lot of people think it’s just the church’s attempt to stay relevant in the neighborhood.”

According to Padro, Shiloh Baptist poses more of a threat to Shaw than does Queen of Sheba’s ability to serve up a few drinks. “They’ve been a bad neighbor,” he says of the church. “They have over a dozen vacant and abandoned properties that have been boarded up for a very long time. They haven’t maintained them properly. They haven’t properly boarded them up to make sure vagrants and children don’t get in. They promised they would renovate the properties and never did a thing. It’s a decade-long pattern of broken promises.”

Shiloh Baptist Church declined to comment.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Alcohol, Shaw. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.