New London ― For the first time in years, Custom House Pier sat empty this week after the City Dock Restaurant and Oyster Bar was ordered by the state to disassemble its waterside business.

But Mayor Michael Passero is not ruling out the restaurant – or a successor – returning to the site at some point.

The 50-foot shipping containers that comprised the casual eatery had been in place since the spring of 2022, a violation of state licensing and federal insurance requirements requiring the containers to be removed from the pier every fall.

That failure of restaurant owner Frank Maratta to take down the containers at the end of each season, which ran from April 15 to Oct. 15, led to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection refusing to extend the restaurant's operating license.

Maratta declined to comment Thursday.

“Consequently, DEEP will not grant any further extensions of this license nor support any new applications for this activity,” DEEP said in a May 29 letter to city officials. “If the City fails to comply with this Notice of Violation, DEEP will escalate its enforcement response in accordance with established policies.”

DEEP argued keeping the restaurant intact on the pier violates both state and federal FEMA flood insurance requirements.

But Passero said he interpreted DEEP’s as a warning, not an edict.

“I read that letter as saying DEEP would not renew the license or grant a new one unless the containers were removed this year,” he said. “If Maratta or someone else is interested in operating on the pier, the city would support that to the state.”

Maratta, owner of the Pavilion in Old Lyme, was granted a three-year lease by the city in 2020 that was extended for another five years in 2023. The agreement called for payments to the city of $1,883 per month for each of the seven months the restaurant operated each year on a 9,000-square-foot section of pier.

In 2019, DEEP issued a five-year conditional license allowing the restaurant to operate on the pier – as long as the shipping containers were removed at end of each operating season. Maratta told The Day in 2021 it cost him $50,000 to remove the shipping containers and reassemble them.

The city and DEEP’s Land & Water Resources Division, which discouraged privatization of the Downtown Waterfront Park piers for any non-water-dependent structures, engaged in months of negotiations before reaching a compromise that allowed the restaurant to operate.

Passero said the state’s prohibition on allowing businesses to operate on “public domains” located over water is in stark contrast to other states’ rules.

“You go to Massachusetts or Rhode Island where they don’t have those exceptions – where would Newport be if they couldn’t use their waterfront?” he asked. “(The City Dock Restaurant and Oyster Bar) was the first time we had genuine commerce in that part of the city.”

Maratta has listed the eight shipping containers and equipment ― refrigerators, ovens, sinks and fryers ― that made up the restaurant for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $295,000. The post states Maratta paid $1.2 million for the components.

j.penney@theday.com