Prince George’s County licensing commissioners sided with College Park officials and residents and voted July 9 to deny a local liquor store’s application to reopen next to ZIPS Cleaners on Baltimore Avenue.
The Prince George’s County Board of License Commissioners cited the store’s proposed location, at 7207 Baltimore Ave., near the University of Maryland (UMD) Child Development Center, in a motion to deny the application.
The board voted 4-0 against the application. Vice Chair Armando Camacho abstained from voting, saying he was absent from the initial hearing on June 24.
“This is unequivocally the wrong location, and the city council stands in unified opposition to it,” College Park City Councilmember John Rigg (District 3) said at the June 24 hearing.
College Park Liquors previously operated at the Campus Village Shoppes before the strip mall shut down in 2023 to make way for a student housing complex. The Class A beer, wine and liquor license transfer would have allowed the establishment to reopen in a new location under the new ownership of Joshua Patel and Rajkumar Patel.
The proposed location, near Trader Joe’s, is 700 feet from the day care center and less than 200 feet from the Calvert Hills Playground and Athletic Field, according to Rigg. The city council voted unanimously at its June 10 meeting to send a letter of opposition to the county commissioners regarding the license transfer application.
“This is a wonderful community, a historic community that’s very well established, very family-oriented,” Mayor Fazlul Kabir testified at the June 24 hearing. “And the community has voiced very strong opposition and concerns about the introduction of a full-service liquor store so close to the Calvert Hills playground and the University of Maryland Child Development Center.”
One of the new owners, Rajkumar Patel, said he and Joshua Patel planned to reopen the liquor store as an upscale “first-class establishment” that would “not disturb the peace and quiet of the neighborhood.”
Joshua Patel said during the June 24 hearing that he wants to work with the community and the city to foster a good relationship.
“We do not want those most vulnerable to be attacked or to be at risk,” Joshua Patel said.
During the meeting, however, Calvert Hills Citizens Association President Daniel Oates alleged that Joshua Patel was previously a licensee of a liquor store in Baltimore that was fined in 2022 for selling alcohol to a minor.
According to Baltimore City documents, the city’s Board of Liquor License Commissioners found that Main Street Bar & Liquors, where Joshua Patel held a liquor license, sold alcohol to a minor on Jan. 6, 2022, and fined the business $1,500.
During the June 24 meeting, Patel claimed he did not recall any underage violations while he was a licensee and claimed the offense occurred during a transition period while he was transferring the license to a new owner.
“That is when we were handing over the license, and with whatever delay with the Baltimore City court systems, we had, like, a sub-kind of management agreement while that license was being transferred, so I think my name is indeed attached,” Patel said.
“While I was running the store, we did our best to make sure there was no underage drinking,” Patel added.
Neither of the new College Park Liquors owners responded to College Park Here & Now’s request for a comment on the allegations or about the outcome of the hearing.
Catherine Hui, the store’s previous secretary and treasurer, declined to comment on the outcome of the hearing.
Kabir said College Park officials are open to working with the new owners to find a “more suitable” location to reopen the business.
“We want to make it clear, the city of College Park welcomes new business,” Kabir said. “We always do. We have a very strong, dedicated, robust Economic Development Department that will be very happy to work with the applicant to identify a more suitable location elsewhere in the city that aligns better with our long-term vision and community standards.”