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
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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.
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