Community Board 7 approved last night a proposal to create a wine bar on the ground floor at the Majestic at 25 Central Park West on the corner at 62nd Street across from 15 Central Park West.

The vote was 22 to 11, according to an article posted last night by Avi at westsideindependent.com.

The resolution containing the board's approval contained some caveats, however. Its approval was dependent on it "closing down at 12:30 a.m. from Sunday through Tuesday and 1:30 a.m. from Wednesday through Saturday (the owner, Greg Hunt, had initially asked to stay open until 3 A.M.)," its manager having a cell phone designated as "a complaint line," and a promise not to erect a velvet rope in front of the club, the article said.

The bar's application for a liquor license now goes to the State Liquor Authority, which will take the community board vote as a recommendation.

Unlike the three-hour meeting at a subcommittee last month, in which local residents said the bar would bring drug dealers and paparazzi to the neighborhood, the hearing last night, the article continued, "was short and filled with legalisms" and lawyers for the opposition indicated they intend to fight the plan on zoning grounds, which were not at issue at last night's meeting.

When the meeting ended, Mr. Hunt "went up to Paul Millman, the president of 25 CPW's condo board, and said he was willing to put new windows in on the 2nd and 3rd floor above the bar so if people smoke outside the bar the smoke won't get into their apartments," the article said, adding, however, that Mr. Millman, "who thinks a bar doesn't belong in the space, said Hunt's offer was nice but 'it's not that simple.'"

At last month's meeting of the board's business committee, 18 people spoke in favor of the club's proposal and 35 in opposition before it voted 7 to 2 to recommend approval of the plan.

The sister of the Majestic apartment building several blocks to the north on Central Park West, the Century is one of the masterpieces of developer Irwin S. Chanin, who also built the great 56-story Chanin Building on East 42nd Street and many famous theaters around Times Square such as the Roxy, the Biltmore and the Majestic.

Like the Majestic, it was designed by Chanin's in-house architecture department headed by Jacques Delamarre and assisted by sculptor/designer Rene Chambellan in a modified Art Deco style.

The area around Columbus Circle once had many automobile showrooms and in 1908 the blockfront site was acquired by a civic repertory company that erected a theater designed by Carrere & Hastings that opened the next year. For a while, the elegant building, known as the Century Theater, served as an opera house, but was acquired in 1920 by the Shubert theater organization.

In his fine book, "Upper West Side Story, A History And Guide," (Abbeville Press, 1989), Peter Salwen noted that the Century Theater played host to performances by the Metropolitan Opera, Konstantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater, Isadora Duncan, Eleanor Duse, Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes, and Max Reinhardt and that its basement for a while had a nightclub hosted by Texas Guinan.

The Century apartment building opened in 1932, two years after the Majestic, and it was the last of the four great twin-towered apartments to be erected on Central Park West. Over the years, its residents have included agent William Morris, Lee Shubert, the theater magnate, and entertainers Ethel Merman, Robert Goulet, Ray Bolger, Fay Wray and Nanette Fabray.

The proposed cafe and wine bar would be designed in Art Deco-style and would accommodate up to 74 people including staff. Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be served on weekends, and lunch and dinner will be served during the week and the cafe, a rendering of which is shown at the right, will offer take-out service exclusively for the residents of the Century.