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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2012)
3 Street roots July 6, 2012 City’s proposed alcohol impact area goes flat with OLCC BY AMANDA WALDROUPE communicating with the OLCC for the last two years regarding the creation of the ortland’s two-year effort to create a impact area. And Girard says the formal controversial alcohol impact area in rule-making process to create the impact downtown Portland in the hopes of area was slated to begin in the next month. decreasing public drinking and inebriation The OLCC’s refusal to create an alcohol appears scuttled. impact area won’t help cool growing tension The Oregon Liquor Control Commission and strain between the city and the OLCC. (OLCC) informed City Commissioner Recently, the OLCC approved the ability for Amanda Fritz, who has spearheaded the outdoor food carts to have liquor licenses, impact area’s creation, along with the which the city strenuously objected to. In a Portland Police Bureau and Office of press release issued July 2, Fritz did not Neighborhood Involvement late last week mince words when she referred to the that it did not have the legal authority to OLCC’s decision regarding the alcohol designate impact areas in cities. impact area as a “bait and switch.” Tom Bizeau, Fritz’s chief of staff, says “(This) is another example of the agency OLCC Director Steve Pharo told Fritz’s showing indifference to problems linked to office that the OLCC’s position derives from alcohol sales in local jurisdictions, and a legal counsel the commission sought from disgraceful lack of transparency and the Department of Justice. According to accountability,” Fritz said. Bizeau, the Department of Justice told the The impact area would have restricted OLCC that state statute would have to be alcohol sales in convenience stores, and changed in order for the OLCC to have legal would have encompassed downtown authority to create alcohol impact areas. Neither the OLCC nor the Department of Portland, Old Town, and parts of the Goose Hollow and Northwest neighborhoods. It Justice returned phone calls for comment. would have been the first alcohol impact Bizeau says the Department of Justice has area in the state. not made its opinion public. "There’s no The impact area would have prohibited documentation,” Bizeau says, adding that convenience stores from selling malt liquor the OLCC has not given the city a specific and beer containing more than 5.75 percent reason why creating impact areas is not alcohol by volume, and wine containing legal. “We don’t even know why we can’t do more than 14 percent alcohol. Stores also it.” would have been prohibited from selling “It surprised everybody,” says Chris beer in individual 16-ounce cans, which Girard, the owner of Plaid Pantry, a Girard says is a highly popular product in convenience store chain that would have Plaid Pantry and other convenience stores. been affected by the alcohol impact area. Microbrews would have been exempt from It’s an abrupt about-face on the OLCC’s the restrictions. part. The city of Portland has been S T A F F W R IT E R P Fallen Off the Edge A new book by A rt Garcia "Fallen Off the Edge" is a chronicle of one man's experiences after returning from the Vietnam War. Told through the eyes of Street Roots columnist Art Garcia, this book celebrates the major victories born from a series of questionable choices. Art's jocular storytelling takes the reader along with him in and out of the California prison system over the course of 10 years until he found the strength and courage to pull himself up from the fall. The book is available online at www. blurb.com under searchword Art Garcia. Join the Fight to Protect Oregon Consumers. Support fair and affordable utility rates. CUB has saved Help us save even more. Become a Oregonians over CUB Member $5,400,000,000 today! Large servings o f high alcohol beverages would have been banned from downtown shelves under the city’s proposed alcohol impact area The intent of the impact area was to decrease what proponents call “street drinking,” or drinking in public. Currently illegal in Portland, offenders are given a citation. The Portland Police Bureau gave 1,700 citations for public drinking in the proposed impact area in 2009, accounting for 55 percent of all public drinking citations in the city. The city first tried to get store owners to voluntarily agree to restricting alcohol sales in an initiative called “VibrantPDX.” It failed disasterously — only 9 out of 43 stores signed the voluntary agreement. Owners balked at having the city attempt to impose restrictions on private businesses and to stop them from selling products they said accounted for a quarter of their total sales. Girard says the city’s insistence on prohibiting alcohol products based on alcohol content rankled store owners, including him. Girard says he attempted to work with the city to ban particular brand names of alcohol beverages known to be preferred by problematic street drinkers, rather than alcoholic products above a certain alcohol content. That is the method alcohol impact areas in Spokane and other Washington cities use. to regulate alcohol sales. Plaid Pantry has stores in Washington, and Girard says such an approach both tackles street drinking problems and prevents stores from losing business. But he says the city was unwilling to find a compromise. “I thought we could have agreed, but apparently we couldn’t,” Girard says. “We were more than willing to support a restriction. [But] we didn’t think the city’s plan was the right way to go.” Bizeau says Fritz’s office plans to file a formal public records request to see the Department of Justice opinion. He also says the city will begin looking at the possibility of asking the state Legislature to write a statute allowing for the creation of alcohol impact areas. good, local, food. ALBERTA COOPERATIVE GROCERY 1500 NE Alberta St. Portland, OR 97211 503.287.4333 www.albertagrocery.coop open to everyone 9-10 dally DINE OUT. DIG IN. MAKE A DIFFERENCE. 1 2 3 Supper Club @ Sisters sponsored by W hole Foods Pearl Davis Street Tavern Pacific Pie Company Mississippi Pizza Dovetail Bakery Beulahland 8 9.. 10 n The Bent Brick Davis Street Tavern People’s Sandwich Grain & Gristle of Portland The Blue Monk Kenny & Zuke’s Portobello 15 http://oregoncub.org/streetroots Beulahland 16 Beulahland Ping 22 2 3 .. 24 ' Salvador Molly’s Beulahland Biwa 30 Davis Street Tavern Beulahland 7 DeNicolas Restaurant Havana West Cafe Hibiscus 12 13 14 Pastini (9th & Taylor) Prasad Dove Vivi A ---------- ; jade Teahouse 1 9 ... 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