Alcohol bill a boon for downtown Logan?
Posted: Sunday, March 7, 2010 12:15 am | Updated: 10:12 pm, Sat Mar 6, 2010.
By Jay Patrick | 10 comments
ALAN MURRAY Server Niki Athay fills a glass of wine for a patron at Le Nonne in Logan Friday. Utah has a proposed bill that would make more restaurant liquor licenses available throughout the state. (Alan Murray/Herald Journal)
Some members of the downtown Logan business community think their area would benefit from a proposed bill that would make more restaurant liquor licenses available across Utah.
Right now only three licenses are left because Utah caps the number available based on population. One license enabling a restaurant to serve hard liquor is issued for every 5,200 residents. Licenses to serve heavy beer and wine only are issued one per 9,300 people.
House Bill 223 aims to convert 40 available tavern licenses (light beer only) into restaurant licenses.
Rep. Jack Draxler, R-North Logan, said he supports the measure, as long as it does not increase the total number of licenses available. That is not proposed in HB223, but talk of loosening the state’s license-to-population ratio has been part of the overall debate.
“I think the system we have of tying number of licenses to population has got a good track record,” Draxler said, noting that rates of incidents related to drinking are lower in Utah than the nation as a whole.
If the cap keeps a restaurant chain from coming to Utah, so be it, Draxler said.
Some people working to liven up downtown Logan hope a dearth of licenses doesn’t result in the city missing out on restaurants, which planners have
identified as key to boosting economic and social vitality in the city’s core.
Joe Needham, a former Logan Municipal councilman, a downtown businessman and a leader of the Downtown Alliance, said he’d like to see the license-to-population provision dumped.
“It’s just part of being accepting to all different groups of people,” Needham said.
The availability of a license was critical for the Iron Gate Grill to locate downtown, Needham said.
Without a license, “it probably would have fallen apart,” he said. “It’s prohibitive economically.”
Logan Economic Development Director Kirk Jensen also wants to see more licenses available so Logan doesn’t miss out on a business that could boost downtown.
Steven Bogden, managing director of Coldwell Banker Commercial, told the House Business and Labor Committee this week that a client of his, the restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings, is looking to open several locations in Utah. But that would only happen if licenses were available, he said.
“If they can’t get their business plan, let’s go to Sacramento. If they jump over Salt Lake, let’s go to Portland or somewhere else and we’ve missed it,” Bogden was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune as saying. “And it’s got nothing to do with alcohol. It’s about economic development, jobs and growth.”
The Business and Labor Committee passed the bill. It now goes to the full House.
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