Waverly Residents Want Yau Bros. Closed Overnight

Some community activists in Waverly are circulating a petition to have a troubled carryout restaurant closed overnight.

On Wednesday, Joe Stewart, a Waverly resident who also blogs at North Baltimore Patch, emailed a petition asking residents to oppose granting Yau Bros. Carryout a late-night commercial operations license.

A law requiring most businesses in the city open between midnight and 5 a.m. to receive a special license to operate went into effect earlier this year.

The law allows communities surrounding a business to oppose an establishment being granted an initial license, and again when the license is up for an annual renewal. 

The penalty for a business operating overnight without a license is $500 for each time a business is caught open without permission. If the city’s finance department receives more than 10 signatures opposing a license being granted, the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals holds a public hearing to decide if a business should receive a license despite community objections.

Yau Bros., located at 2901 Greenmount Ave., has been the scene of four murders in recent years. The most recent occurred on Oct. 31, 2011, when Freddie Jones Jr. was shot and killed in the restaurant.  Markell Jones, 18, was sentenced to 50 years in jail for the murder in Baltimore Circuit Court last month.  

Councilman Bill Henry, who sponsored the bill creating the late-night commercial licenses, said the shooting at Yau Bros. was a driving force to submit the bill again after a previous version stalled in committee.

“[The murder] reminded me that while I’d come up with this with the intention of dealing more with lower level quality of life kind of stuff, the police department had liked it, because it was another tool that they could use short of padlocking,” Henry said during an interview about the bill in late June.  

A call for comment to the restaurant was not immediately returned.