No new restaurants, bars in Babylon Village

Babylon Village trustees last Tuesday extended a moratorium, first imposed last March, on new restaurants and bars.

With a 200-plus-seat restaurant set to open in an old bank building on Deer Park Avenue in early 2012, Mayor Ralph Scordino said officials need the six-month moratorium extension to gauge the effects of increased traffic on the downtown business district.

“It’s about parking, the flow of traffic,” he said. “We want to put some signage together letting people know where the municipal lots are instead of parking on Montauk Highway and Deer Park.”

The new restaurant, Monsoon, would join about 10 already operating in the downtown.