SLA approves Empire Wine expansion plan

Buoyed by surging sales during the coronavirus pandemic, Empire Wine in Colonie plans to more than double its footprint, bringing the total store size to nearly 14,000 square feet, as part of an expansion into vacant adjoining space in Northway Shopping Center.

Construction should begin in January, with an eye toward opening the full larger store in March, owner Brad Junco said. The expansion was approved Wednesday during a meeting of the board of the State Liquor Authority. About 15 to 20 more employees will be hired, Junco said. The new space, in what previously was a Dress Barn location, in recent months has been used by Empire as a warehouse for filling and storing orders placed online prior to customer pickup. Junco said Empire’s business has doubled for orders being picked up at the store since the pandemic began, and Empire’s local deliveries have increased by an even greater factor.

Empire opened in Northway Shopping Center in fall 2007.

In other news from the meeting, the Schenectady location of Wolff ’s Biergarten was approved to have its liquor license reinstated. In exchange, Wolff ’s agreed to a $10,000 fine and to retrain staff members who permitted violations of pandemicrelated safety measures that led to the license’s temporary suspension on Sept. 11.

Owner Matt Baumgartner said he hopes to reopen Wolff ’s

Schenectady by this weekend. The other Wolff ’s locations, in Albany, Syracuse and Troy, were unaffected by the Schenectady suspension.

The SLA board also accepted an offer of a $10,000 fine for The Clubhouse, a bar on Central Avenue in Albany that had its liquor license suspended on Aug. 29. As at Wolff ’s, investigators documented Clubhouse customers and staff without masks, failure to observe physical distancing and food not being required with initial alcohol orders. All are violations of current state regulations for bars and restaurants as part of the effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

It was not immediately clear when The Clubhouse would reopen. The telephone number listed for it went unanswered Wednesday afternoon, and its Facebook page has not been updated since March.

The compliance checks that ensnared the two bars are among thousands that have been conducted weekly for the past several months by a multi-agency state task force.