{"id":233866,"date":"2026-05-16T15:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233866\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T15:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T15:27:11","slug":"ex-nyc-council-gop-leader-betting-on-new-outdoor-beer-garden-at-staten-island-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/233866\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-NYC Council GOP leader betting on new outdoor beer garden at Staten Island Mall"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former GOP elected official has gone from serving his Staten Island constituents in the City Council to serving them frosty brews in his new outdoor beer garden. <\/p>\n

Joe Borelli was a member of the Council from 2015 to 2025, and its minority leader from 2021 to 2025, and often ripped lefty politics for driving businesses out of the Big Apple. He\u2019s now gambling on his own venture, called The Garden by Hop Shoppe, in the pedestrian plaza at Staten Island Mall on Richmond Avenue in New Springville.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are sort of taking the Brooklyn urban beer garden and bringing it to Staten Island,\u201d said Borelli, who is partnering in the seasonal venture with borough-based restaurant and bar king Carmine Gualtieri.<\/p>\n

\"AFormer NYC Council Republican Minority Leader Joe Borelli has gone from serving his Staten Island constituents to serving them frosty brews in his new outdoor beer garden. Leonardo Munoz for NY Post<\/p>\n

The venue is decorated with picnic tables, gazebos, palm trees, umbrellas and a shipping container that was retrofitted to be used as the main bar. \u00a0It has cornhole boards, foosball tables and other games, and it will feature bands, DJs and other live entertainment.<\/p>\n

Borelli said it\u2019ll offer a wide variety of foreign and domestic brews and a menu similar to what Gualtieri offers at his popular pub The Hop Shoppe<\/a> in Stapleton.<\/p>\n

The beer garden briefly opened May 5 for a Cinco de Mayo bash that drew a large crowd, and it hopes to be running permanently by Memorial Day weekend.<\/p>\n

Borelli, who stepped down from the Council to take a job as a lobbyist, <\/a>said he knows as well as anyone that New York is so saddled by high taxes and other anti-business policies that he\u2019s taking a big financial risk.<\/p>\n

\"AThe Garden will offer a wide variety of foreign and domestic brews and a menu similar to what Borelli\u2019s partner Carmine Gualtieri offers at his popular pub The Hop Shoppe. Leonardo Munoz for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s ironic,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve been such a critic of New York for so long\u201d as a place to do business. \u201cIt\u2019s not lost on me that I\u2019m now investing personal money into the future of the city, but I want this to succeed, and I want to have more locations someday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest attraction we have going is that there\u2019s not many outdoor bars on Staten Island, and people want to spend time outside, listening to music, playing games,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we\u2019ll be doing a lot of things like bingo, live music, psychic nights, doggy brunches.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are now also looking to malls in a different way than they used to 30 years ago, and people want to have new experiences,\u201d said Borelli. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former GOP elected official has gone from serving his Staten Island constituents in the City Council to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8075,8978,301,22070,57,9,56,63,65,64,87,34034,134,58],"class_list":["post-233866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bars","tag-beer","tag-city-council","tag-gardens","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-politics","tag-shopping-malls","tag-staten-island","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}