News from Patrick Flynn

Last week’s Assembly discussion on the universal identification check requirement at Brown Jug’s Tikahtnu Commons location got me thinking a bit more about how our community regulates liquor sales.  To explain a bit every establishment in our community that sells alcohol, whether they’re a beverage dispensary (bars & restaurants, though there are different kinds of licenses in this category) or a package store (retail outlets that sell beer, wine & liquor), requires a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) under Anchorage Municipal Code (Title 21).  This allows community councils and the Assembly to recommend neighborhood-specific practices for those businesses to follow, and to provide those recommendations to the Alcoholic Beverage Control board, where they are generally adopted.

The issue in this case related to neighborhood concerns about those prohibited by law from consuming alcohol due to previous legal infractions, noted by a red stripe (“alcohol restricted”) notation on their state id patronizing package stores in the Muldoon area.  The idea behind the universal id check at the Tikahtnu Commons location was that it was the first step toward curtailing this behavior in the neighborhood as employees would see the identifications of those they might otherwise not bother to check and therefore be more likely to catch “red stripe” customers.  Brown Jug, which is generally acknowledged to be among the most responsible retailers in the industry, protested that while a more global approach might be warranted it was unfair to make them go first when their competitors did not have the same restrictions.

All this reminded me of how the downtown area governs its package stores, which requires a little history.  When I grew up in the area there were quite a few package stores but over the years, partly due to economics and partly due to neighborhood pressure, every package store in downtown (and South Addition, the neighborhood south of the Park Strip) closed except for a small shop in the lobby of the Captain Cook hotel.  When that shop lost its lease and wanted to re-open in a storefront across Fifth Avenue one of my Assembly predecessors, Charles Wohlforth, oversaw a community discussion that resulted in a series of conditions prior to issuance of the new CUP.  That worked well for about 15 years and, more recently, three other package stores sought CUPs.  In each case the Assembly adopted the same standards, which are as follows:

RESTRICTIONS ON PRODUCTS SOLD:

1. No cheap wines, such as White Port, in any size. No fortified wines less than $10.00 a bottle.
2. No six packs of beer less than $6.00.
3. No liquor products less than 750 milliliters. Any products where the 750 milliliter size has a shelf price of $10.00 or less shall not be stocked.
4. Licensee shall place a sticker or other identifying mark on all products sold as individual containers.

STAFFING REQUIRED:

1. TAMS or equivalent training shall be provided to all store personal before hiring.

ADVERTISING RESTRICTIONS:

1. No price or beer signs in the windows. No low price newspaper advertising.

COMMUNITY REVIEW REQUIREMENTS:

1. Semi-annual review of operations by the Downtown Community Council, if desired by the Downtown Community Council.
2. Video tapes of customers viewable on request by the Downtown Community Council held for a period of five days.

A copy of the conditions imposed by the Assembly in connection with this conditional use approval shall be maintained on the premises and at a location visible to the public.

The difficulty with this approach is that it requires the Assembly to identify each license application in the downtown area and then append the requirements to its CUP application, meaning there’s a risk that one could be missed and create an unfair business environment.  Given that the standards have worked well for each of these establishments (operators of the Fifth Avenue store testified these conditions helped them prove alcohol found in possession of homeless inebriates did not come from their store) I’ve begun work on an ordinance that would codify these conditions so they’ll be automatically applied to all package stores operating within the Downtown Community Council boundaries, thus ensuring all stores are treated equally.  By doing so I hope to provide a model that other parts of Anchorage can follow in order to address their neighborhood concerns in an even-handed manner.

With that, if you have ideas or thoughts on this subject I’d be happy to hear them!

Regards,

Patrick

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the Assembly did decide to remove the universal id check requirement from the Tikahtnu Commons store, but don’t be surprised if the issue arises again soon.