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UPDATED: St. Paul’s neighborhood restaurants will learn the fate of their gin and tonics on Dec. 16

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Big changes could be coming to St. Paul’s restaurant industry — but one key step remains before new neighborhood establishments can serve up gin and tonics.

The St. Paul City Council on Wednesday voted to lift the citywide cap on liquor licenses for neighborhood restaurants, but a final decision on adjusting the county charter accordingly won’t happen until Dec. 16.

Changes to the city charter require a “yes” vote from all seven city council members, and it looks like there’s a possible hold-out: Dan Bostrom. (ADDENDUM 5:24 PM 12/10/15: Scroll down for Bostrom’s latest comments, below.)

“If they had forced a vote on it yesterday, I would have absolutely voted ‘no,'” Bostrom said on Thursday.

The changes will impact new restaurants outside of downtown and other major commercial development districts that are already exempt from the cap.

Neighborhood restaurants serving martinis.

Neighborhood restaurants serving martinis.

For decades, the city has allowed neighborhood restaurants to share 200 licenses to serve hard liquor, such as martinis and Bloody Marys. Some neighborhoods, such as Highland Park, constantly operate at or near their share of the cap.

In addition to eliminating the cap entirely, the latest vote also redefines what a restaurant is, no longer requiring that a specific percentage of sales come from food while adding other restrictions on serving times.

The St. Paul Charter Commission has already supported the changes, which were widely embraced by restaurant owners and are expected to make opening new establishments easier. Under the new rules, neighborhood restaurants must stop serving food and alcohol at midnight, except for existing establishments like Mancini’s Char House and Lounge, which will be “grandfathered in.”

Still, the changes are not quite a done deal. On Wednesday, Bostrom asked the council to hold off on voting on a necessary amendment to the city charter. Council President Russ Stark told him that he could lay the issue over for a week, but no more than a week.

If the amendment passes the council on Dec. 16, the new rules will be implemented in early 2016. If the vote isn’t a unanimous 7-0, expect a lengthy, possibly contentious discussion in the New Year. And there’s also the option of putting the question to public referendum in November 2016, nearly a year from now.

In other words, the city council meeting of Dec. 16 could bring out the fireworks, indeed…

ADDENDUM 12/10/15:

In an interview Thursday, Bostrom raised three key concerns about the liquor license proposal. He said the cap, which offers a certain number of liquor licenses by ward, helps distribute restaurants throughout the city. Ward 6 on East Side has five or six extra licenses available for the taking, while Highland Park runs at capacity.

The possibility of serving hard alcohol gives the East Side at least a small advantage in drawing new eateries, and several have opened on Payne Avenue.

Under the new rules, however, restaurants could locate wherever they choose and still serve hard alcohol, which is little help to neighborhoods like his that are struggling to attract new businesses. “There’s no restriction on where they can go,” Bostrom said. “They’ll cluster.”

Citywide, “we’ve got about 12 or 14 liquor licenses that aren’t in use now anyway,” Bostrom said. “Now, they’re in various wards, and I’ve got several of them over here, which I’m more than happy to trade with someone on.”

His second hang-up is that the new rules drop existing language that requires eateries to obtain 60 percent of their revenue from food sales. The new language simply states that a “substantial amount” of sales must come from food.

“A substantial amount from food? What’s that? Nobody knows,” Bostrom said. “What are the guidelines that you use to monitor this stuff?”

His third concern is that restaurants that must close at midnight under the new rules will come back to the table a few years down the line and complain they can’t compete with downtown restaurants and restaurants that have been grandfathered in. They’ll ask for 2 a.m. closing times, leaving residential neighborhoods overwhelmed with intoxicated patrons looking for their cars.


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