Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 6, June 2004
Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
Proposed U-District Alcohol Impact Area debated
By JAMES BUSH
George Petrie has a unique perspective on the City's attempt to put the squeeze on the problem of drinking in public through the creation of Alcohol Impact Areas.
Petrie owns property in Pioneer Square, the site of Seattle's first Alcohol Impact Area. He thinks the rules have helped that neighborhood, so he testified before the City Council in support of the City's proposal to set up another Alcohol Impact Area in the University District, the neighborhood in which he lives.
The City Council is expected to approve a proposal to create a large Alcohol Impact Area encompassing Downtown, Belltown and Capitol Hill and a smaller one encircling the University District business core (bordered by Northeast Ravenna Boulevard, 15th Avenue Northeast, Northeast Northlake Way and Latona Avenue Northeast).
Once such zones are established, cities can petition the state Liquor Control Board to impose Alcohol Impact Area-specific restrictions on alcohol sales, but only after a six-month effort to obtain voluntary compliance through the signing of "Good Neighbor Agreements" with local liquor licensees.
The most common target of Alcohol Impact Areas is cheap, high-alcohol beers and wines sold in individual containers. The one established in Pioneer Square bans any single bottle or can sales and prohibits the sale of six brands of high-alcohol "fortified" wines.
Why the University District? The neighborhood has always had a large transient population and a fairly high concentration of alcohol-related police calls. Mayor Greg Nickels, who proposed establishing the two new Alcohol Impact Areas, says "we took a look at the statistics and Capitol Hill and the University District really stuck out."
The business community also supports the establishment of a U-District Alcohol Impact Area, says Teresa Lord Hugel, executive director of the Greater University Chamber of Commerce. Kian Pornour, co-owner and general manager of the Woolly Mammoth shoe store on University Way agrees. "It's about sending the message that this is a neighborhood," he says.
Hugel admits that, in some ways, setting up a U-District Alcohol Impact Area is a self-defense mechanism. "We're very concerned about what happens when AIAs get established in Capitol Hill and Pioneer Square," she says. Anecdotal evidence seems to show that when the AIA began restricting the flow of cheap alcohol, some of Pioneer Square's chronic public inebriates simply went next door to neighborhoods such as Belltown, the International District, and Capitol Hill. "We do have a problem with inebriates now, and we'll have more of a problem" once other AIAs get set up, she adds.
The City's figures support the argument that the University District is impacted by alcohol at a rate greater than other neighborhoods. Despite encompassing less than 1 percent of the city's land area, the proposed U-District Alcohol Impact Area accounted for about 3 percent of the Seattle Fire Department's alcohol-related medical incidents, about 4 percent of the drinking in public complaints, and about 3 percent of the "person down" reports.
While Pioneer Square's Alcohol Impact Area, which went into effect last September, has shown some modest reductions in alcohol-related incidents, backers of such zones point to the experience in Tacoma. There, a large Alcohol Impact Area encompassing most of the city's downtown area first imposed alcohol restrictions in early 2002. In its first year, the zone was credited with a 35 percent decrease in alcohol-related emergency medical service calls, a 21 percent decrease in detox admissions, and a 59 percent decrease in complaints about drinking in city parks. However, there was some displacement of liquor-related problems (medical emergency calls caused by alcohol increased 15 percent within parts of Tacoma outside the Alcohol Impact Area).
If a mandatory Alcohol Impact Area is set up in the University District, the state Liquor Control Board could punish offending merchants with fines and temporary suspensions of their liquor license, says Bill Schrader, regional manager for Seattle and South King County. The Liquor Control Board would also accept complaints filed by law enforcement officers who spot stores selling illegal products. But Schrader adds that he hasn't yet issued a single citation to any merchant in Pioneer Square's Alcohol Impact Area.
Interestingly, the single person at the most recent Seattle Alcohol Impact Area public hearing to express misgivings about the legislation was University District resident Matthew Fox, who noted that college students and other working-class folks often do their drinking on the cheap. "I'm here on behalf of the tens of thousands of young people who drink single cans of beer and who occasionally drink cheaper brands," he told City Council members.
He's got a good point. An informal survey of merchants whose stores would be within the U-District Alcohol Impact Area confirmed that a lot of single beer sales (and many sales of high-alcohol beers) are to younger drinkers. "Right now, people have limited money," says Kim, a convenience store manager along University Way who asked to be identified only by her first name. She says she spends a significant amount of her time at work waiting for people to dig through their pockets for enough change to make their purchase.
Provided the rules were the same for all stores, "I don't see what it would hurt" if an Alcohol Impact Area were established, says Natalie Garvey, an employee at the U-District Chevron gas station along Brooklyn Avenue. But most other store owners acknowledged they would lose business if a single-container sales ban were established.
Kitae, the owner of Cowen Park Grocery (he also declined to give his last name), says his store, at 1217 NE Ravenna Blvd., is far enough away from the University of Washington that he doesn't have a big student clientele. "We do sell single beers, but not a lot," he says. If an Alcohol Impact Area is imposed: "Whenever it comes, I'll take it," he says. "We'll go from here."