WESTBROOK – Westbrook’s Municipal Officers on Monday approved renewing the liquor license for the Mill Side Tavern. However, by the next day, the bar appeared to have shut down.

As of Tuesday, a big cardboard signed reading “Closed” had appeared in the window of the tavern on Cumberland Street. The sign was still there on Wednesday morning.

Patricia and William Kowalski, who have owned the bar for 18 years, did not return repeated calls for comment regarding the status of the tavern.

However, according to information provided by Deputy City Clerk Diana Brown to the Municipal Officers at the City Council meeting Monday night, the owners had told the city that they were unsure whether the bar would open the next day and were seeking to sell the business.

Before the vote on the liquor license, Councilor John O’Hara questioned whether such a city license would transfer to a new owner. Upon learning that any new owner have to make a new request for a liquor license, the Municipal Officers, who include the City Council and Mayor Colleen Hilton, voted 6-0 to approve the license for the Mill Side Tavern. Councilors Paul Emery and Brendan Rielly were absent.

Last summer the tavern won approval of a renewal of its liquor license on a split vote. Police had originally recommended denial of the renewal because the owners had failed to produce a surveillance tape from a night a fight broke out in the bar and sent a person through a glass window. But police finally changed their recommendation to a conditional approval, provided the bar saved its surveillance tapes and made them available to police.

This year, according a memo from City Administrator Jerre Bryant, the police department “finds no reason for denial of this license.”

Keith Luke, the city’s director of economic and community development, said Tuesday that he hadn’t been informed of the bar’s closing.

If it has shut down, he said, “my understanding is that there has been a tavern at this location for a very long time and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were another one there soon.”

The Hob-Nob Bar occupied the site at 10-12 Cumberland St. before the business became the Mill Side Tavern.