Walk into the Allegria Hotel on the boardwalk any summer evening since 2009 and you could order a cocktail with your dinner while looking out at the Atlantic. Nobody stopped you. Nobody fined the hotel. For seventeen years, that transaction sat in a gap between what Long Beach's city code said and what the city actually allowed to happen on its own boardwalk.
According to the LI Herald, that gap closed on April 7, 2026, when the Long Beach City Council voted unanimously to strike the word "nonalcoholic" from the ordinance governing boardwalk-facing businesses and lift the city's decades-old moratorium on new bar permits. The vote didn't invent a new freedom. It caught the law up to a reality that had been sitting in plain sight at one end of the boardwalk for nearly two decades.
The Vote Everyone Watched, and the One Rule Nobody Changed
More than 200 residents and business owners packed City Hall for the hearing, split between people who wanted the boardwalk to feel more like Rockaway or Jones Beach and people worried about what happens when a summer night on a barrier island includes alcohol. City Council President Brendan Finn spent much of the meeting correcting a rumor that had already spread faster than the ordinance itself.
"Alcohol is still not, not, permitted on the boardwalk or on the beach," Finn told the room, according to the LI Herald. Open containers remain banned on the boardwalk and the sand. What changed is narrower and, for anyone who actually eats dinner on the boardwalk, more useful: a restaurant with an opening facing the boardwalk can now pour you a drink to go with that dinner, as long as you're drinking it inside.
City Manager Dan Creighton made the same point at the start of the session, telling the council plainly that the changes would not allow alcohol consumption on the boardwalk or beach itself. It's a distinction worth holding onto, because the headline version of this story, the one that traveled fastest on social media, is not the version that actually passed.
The Loophole That Was Already Seventeen Years Old
The reason this vote landed differently than the last time Long Beach considered it in 2017, when the council voted 4-1 to keep the restrictions in place, is that the city had already been living with a version of the new rule for years without calling it that.
Finn pointed to the Allegria Hotel directly during the hearing. The hotel has been serving alcohol on its boardwalk-facing premises since 2009, in full compliance with New York State law but technically out of step with Long Beach's own charter. "They've been in business since 2009, no problems, great place," Finn said, according to the LI Herald. "People come here and have food and alcoholic beverages."
That's the part of this story that a quick scroll through a news alert misses. This wasn't the council opening a door that had been locked. It was the council recognizing that one business had been serving alcohol on its boardwalk-facing premises since 2009 without incident, and bringing the rules into line with that long-standing practice.
Who This Actually Clears the Way For
The timing lines up with two specific businesses that had already applied to the New York State Liquor Authority for on-premises licenses before the local ordinance even changed.
Tulum Tacos & Tequila is opening its third Long Island location, Hacienda Tulum, at 180 Boardwalk, anchoring roughly 5,800 square feet of the new Superblock waterfront retail development. A limited-time bar pop-up has been running ahead of the full restaurant, which is targeting a mid-September opening. Owner Nicolas Geeraerts spoke at the April hearing about his restaurant.
"Our lease prevents us from being open past 11 p.m. at night," Geeraerts said. "We are not opening a nightclub. We are opening up a first-class establishment. A Mexican eatery and speakeasy," he said, according to the LI Herald.
Riptides 11561, operating out of an Edward Boulevard boardwalk storefront under a lease filed in January 2025, applied for its own liquor license around the same time. Between the Allegria Hotel's long-standing bar, Tulum's incoming Hacienda Tulum, and Riptides pursuing the same path, the boardwalk is looking at three sit-down alcohol licenses clustered along a stretch that had exactly one for most of the last two decades.
None of this happens automatically. City Council approval only gets a business to the front of the line for a New York State Liquor Authority on-premises license, which comes with its own application steps and public hearing process. The local vote removed the city-level obstacle. The state process still has to run its course for each address.
The Rest of the Boardwalk Isn't Waiting on a Liquor License
Not every new arrival on the boardwalk this year is chasing a bar permit, and it's worth separating the alcohol story from the broader wave of openings that would have happened regardless of how the council voted.
- Barrier Beets, a year-round clean-eating spot at 190 Boardwalk, opened with daytime hours built around brunch, family lunch, and the kind of quick stop that fits between a beach day and the car.
- The Fresh Beet, on the boardwalk near Riverside Boulevard, has become a regular stop for the cycling and running crowd looking for a juice or a toast before continuing down the 2.2-mile stretch.
- Zeebo's, tucked upstairs at Bright Eyes Beer, has built a following around burgers that reviewers keep describing as better than the boardwalk's more casual standbys.
- Driftwood LBNY, Sherry Blossom, JJ Coopers, and Roc & Olive round out a stretch of sit-down and counter-service spots that have made the boardwalk feel less like a snack corridor and more like an actual dinner destination, even before anyone could legally pour a glass of wine to go with the meal.
That distinction matters if you're planning an actual evening out. A drink with dinner is now possible at more addresses than it was in the spring, but the boardwalk's food identity was already shifting on its own, one storefront at a time, independent of what the City Council decided about alcohol.
What Actually Changes This Fall
If you live in Long Beach, the practical version of this story is simple. You can now sit down at a boardwalk-facing restaurant, order dinner, and have a drink with it at more places than you could a year ago, with the Allegria Hotel no longer the lone example everyone points to. What you still cannot do is carry that drink out the door, onto the boardwalk, or down to the sand. Long Beach police will keep enforcing that line the same way they always have, regardless of what's now legal inside the four walls a few feet away.
The city last drew this particular line in 1986. It held, informally, for nearly forty years, with sporadic variances granted along the way and one restaurant simply operating past it since 2009 without consequence. The version that passed in April doesn't erase that line. It moves it to match where the boardwalk's actual dinner crowd has been standing for a while.
If you're weighing what a home near this stretch of Nassau County is actually worth given how much the boardwalk's business mix has shifted this year, NMG Properties puts together a free home valuation and neighborhood market report that accounts for exactly this kind of on-the-ground change, not just the comparable sales a portal search turns up.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.