HB City Council Alcohol Discussion During Hearing on Buona Vita, 12-14-10

Mr. Tucker:  We're done taking testimony.

Mr. Duclos:  Mr. Mayor --

Mr. Tucker:  So what, what we're going to do, we've closed the public hearing. What we are going to do now as a council, we're going to discuss this item, possibly along the way there'll be a motion made, possibly a second or a secondary motion, so you need to bear with us. 

We've closed the hearing so we don't want any outbursts in the crowd and so we'll -- we'll proceed along those lines. So with that, do you want to start, Jeff, or --

Mr. Duclos:  I'd be happy, Mayor. Well, first I want to thank all of those who came out tonight to speak. 

I know that this hearing was noticed and scheduled and delayed and, that's a troubling practice to me and something that's happening far too frequently in this council. 

And I'm hoping that that'll come to an end. But even given those obstacles, I'm certainly appreciative of the people who came out to speak and, and the one thing that's resoundingly clear is that everybody, I'm sure all of my colleagues and those out here in the audience have the deepest respect for the business operators and the kind of establishment that they run. 

And, I certainly feel that way, too. But there are a number of things that troubled me about this, this whole issue as it's being raised, and I think it was touched on tonight here a couple of times. 

And part of it is this concept of sort of, this effect of kind of, zoning by barter. It seems to me that is a risky proposition at best for us to enter and the other thing that came up was this, this concept of setting a precedent. 

And that's true, I mean, this would set a precedent and the important thing that we need to look at, it is a precedent that would proceed a policy, which we do not have, as it relates to Pier Avenue. 

[2:02:40 on Granicus video]  And, it's been mentioned up here.  And actually, Councilmember DiVirgilio has talked about this in terms of when we look at the model in terms of downtown and in terms of, you know, when did the problem, you know, you can almost sort of point your finger to it, sort of in the late '90s early 2000’s all of the sudden we were giving out way too much in terms of full alcohol. 

And then all of a sudden we realized we have this problem that we are dealing with today. And, and I think Mr. Saemann said it, you know, if there weren't too many, you know, maybe things would be different. But there are. 

And watching the planning commission hearing, I thought Commissioner Hoffman said it just as clearly as you could say it that, that what we're looking at here is the land use decision regarding a property location. It's not about an operator because whatever we decide, that liquor license stays with that property. 

And, until we can come to some decisions here as a council in terms of are we going to, fulfill the pledge that we've made in terms of what the vision we want that street to be and to continue to be -- and protect the integrity of it, you know, I don't see us as a council being in a position to give anything to any operator that would, that's going to change that radically. 

And I'm afraid that's really what's going to happen here so I, again, I appreciate all the comments tonight. Again, I have the greatest respect for you as operators. I cannot support this. I -- I believe our planning commission did an outstanding job of looking at this as dispassionately as possible from all angles and -- I certainly support their decision.

Mr. Tucker:  Okay. Michael?

Mr. DiVirgilio:  Mr. Mayor, may I?

Mr. Tucker:  Certainly.

Mr. DiVirgilio:  If I may, Mr. Mayor, just a couple quick background items. First I want to actually instead of praising the folks from Buona Vita, I am going to offer actually an apology. 

I never expected so many nasty things to be written about me and about what I was presumed to be promoting or intending to do with your business. And, if people haven't been following the details, you folks applied for this, got denied and were done after the planning commission meeting. 

The fact that we're here today is not your doing, it's my doing and while everybody's praising you I also think it's been stressful for you and I also think to some respect, people are questioning what your motives are, what your purpose is, what you're hiding and I apologize to you for that. 

You're here tonight because I'm inspired by a glimmer of something new that I haven't seen happen in this town yet. And it's interesting given all the rhetoric about this; I actually have only been contacted by two people interested in what I was trying to do. Lots of people have called me names. Lots of people have said things that aren't relevant to this discussion. 

Some people have said they're insulted by what I'm doing. Some people have asked or suggested I've gone to the dark side. I think, Ms. Raymond points out something very true in my mind.

I'm a fraternity guy in college.  I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be spending the amount of time I do talking about alcohol, yet probably the single biggest commitment I made when I ran was what I was going to do with regard to our nightlife. 

It's actually such a big commitment that it's the first of six commitments that I have typed and laminated on my shower wall that I see every morning and can recite to you. 

The commitment I made was that we had a problem that wasn't getting addressed and I was going to devote my time, and I only devote more time to McPherson and our budget, but that I was going to devote my time to trying to figure out a solution to the problem. 

It's easy and it would be easy for me to agree that the solution to this problem is just always saying no and always saying we have to have a policy for something. I agree with policy and a lot of times recently we've been saying no. But to say no is not going make the situation better. 

If you bear with me I want to tell you how I think we're going to make the situation better and at least -- whether we agree to this or not, and I certainly recognize the concern and I understand and frankly wanted to talk about tonight, where is the level of fairness. 

I'm not hard and fast interested in doing this but there's something really neat and new that I -- I just -- whether you agree with me about this whole thing or not or you think I am nuts for even bringing this up. Hang out for just a moment and hear what I'm -- what I think is going on, whether we agree to Buona Vita or not. 

There is something that they are saying that nobody else in town has ever said to us and that is what I want to focus on. That is what I wanted the five of us to talk about. 

I'm not here trying to convert to the dark side or for goodness sake bringing a bar to Upper Pier. I'm not. I'm just not. 

I'm not because I'm not, I'm not because I ran on it and I'm going to have to account for it if I ever run again and I'm not because I don't think it's what's right and I'm not because I'm clear that the neighborhood doesn't agree with it. 

So bear with me, I know I've written something up that I've shared publicly. There are copies on the table, but I want to just quickly articulate. 

My -- my outlook on alcohol issues in town come from three areas: lack of historical enforcement, I'm sorry, lack of historical enforcement at businesses, historical enforcement in the neighborhoods and an over abundance of hours. 

We have worked really hard with the police chief and the planning commission to start enforcing businesses. We've cracked down on several and consistently the businesses are actually following the rules now. 

I'm not sure that we've got it entirely handled but we're continuing to work on it. We're even talking about refining that process tonight. In the neighborhoods, I don't think we're quite doing this right but I -- the general consensus I hear from the neighborhood is things are better than they were in '06 and '07. I think we could do better. 

In the new budget year, I'm going to propose what we did in '08 which is a surge to continue to clamp down on the abusive behavior in the neighborhood. The stuff that you guys are seeing at 2:00 in the morning is coming from the late night -- late, late night crowd. 

That's not going to end until we clamp down more and start reminding folks that graffiti, peeing on corners, loud noise, trash isn't allowed. It's going to take a lot of work. I think we're on our way. I think we're going to be a while until we actually nail it. 

[2:09:47 on Granicus video]  The third thing is an over abundance of what I call capacity, hours generally. That shows up in two ways. One, it shows up in unused capacity, meaning the ability to do business even though you're not, which resides at Buona Vita. 

It shows up in another place which I think somebody alluded to before, maybe, one of the speakers, which is when this place was dead and we were trying as a community to recruit businesses to come here, we gave too much away. 

There's nothing we can do about that unfortunately now except I have an idea that I hear in what they're saying which is we need to start incentivizing, encouraging, buying back, trading, I don't know what the right mechanism is, we need to do something to start reducing those hours. 

Otherwise, here's my -- my thought on this is we've reached, we've reached a stasis, I think would be the word -- Thank you, that's my lawyer -- the lawyer in me. We've reached a stasis. 

Things are going to be the same and when the economy gets better, we're going to see more crowds and more noise, but what we're not doing is doing anything, we're not doing anything to reduce the late night hours. 

So I -- I think even though people don't want more alcohol in the mid-evening, I think if the late night was handled we'd be okay with that, I'm guessing that we'd be okay with fine restaurants. 

And I only say that -- that's maybe it's because I'm -- I think I'd be okay with it because I hear that people want nicer restaurants and when you look around there's really not a nice restaurant that actually causes a problem. 

I can't think of one. I'm happy to learn of one if there's a problem and to figure out where that came from. I can't see one of a legitimate restaurant that closes at 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00 at night. 

With that in mind, what I hear Buona Vita offering is look, we could be more effective at being a legitimate restaurant if we had -- if we were able to serve true alcohol as opposed to what we somehow in some crazy world think of as beer and wine as less than true alcohol. 

I don't really know where that comes from but we do and I think it's a mistake. And I think it's a mistake for real restaurants because a real restaurant doesn't serve alcohol like a bar does. 

So what I -- what I see in this is that what we could -- and this is the trade. This is, you know, the fact of the matter is for me for sure if not the four of you; it would be easier to totally ignore this and deny this. 

Because the problem that's going to come from this location from the unused capacity is going to be so far down the road we're not going to even, we're not going to -- we may not even be around. I may not be around after pitching the idea. I may not get re-elected. 

So we're not going to be around but -- but these things happen and we just went through a -- a similar situation though I think they had more rights at Il Boccaccio. That, that place was a restaurant that closed weeknights at 9:00 and weekends at 10:00, 10:30. 

It was my, sorry guys, it was my favorite Italian restaurant in town. It was -- totally was. And we now are about to have a 1:30 establishment seven nights a week down there because Il Boccaccio had unused capacity that we did nothing about and then when a new owner bought the property, they bought the property at the value of the property which was based on it's given rights. 

It's given rights, not its used rights, it's given rights. That's how the property was valued. So now, we have a merchant, an owner that's saying I'll trade the value of my property. I'll exchange the value of my property if you give me more rights in an hour that will make me a more effective business, I'll trade you hours and other rights that A, demonstrate I'm not a bar and that B, serve your greater purpose in the community. 

And let me, let me list a couple of those. And I think you guys make a good point. They only can serve alcohol until 11:00. They have the right to stay open until 2:00. The body that determines whether or not they have the right to serve alcohol later than 11:00 is not this body. We do not have control over that hours of alcohol license. 

And in fact there is another establishment in town that is threatening to sue because we're challenging or we have so far successfully actually stopped the increase of their ABC hours. We're going to get -- we're about to get sued. 

We're going to see how much say we really have in this. So here's what I think they're -- here -- let me just lay this out. At the moment I -- I'm sorry, I apologize. Dreaming of days of yore. 

And Mr. Mayor, I've put a lot of thought in this, I appreciate you giving me the time. They are willing to give us back city granted hours from 2:00 in the morning, meaning operational hours from 2:00 to 10:00. 

They're going to reduce their weekend operating hours from 11:00 to 10:00. That's an operational decision. They're going to allow us to reduce their ABC hours, their alcohol license hours from 11:00 to 10:00. 

They're also -- also going to let us prohibit TVs, and I don't know if you've been in any of the fine dining and nightlife celebratory establishments lately but TVs are going up everywhere. 

They're going to let us prohibit live entertainment. They're going to let us prohibit dancing. They're going to let us, they're going to include, that there's -- I guess you would say allow us to prohibit direct drink purchases. There will not be a bartender. 

They're going to allow us to put in their use permit that only meals can be served. You can't come in to just get a drink. They're going to agree -- I mean, they're going to agree -- have we seen this before? They're going to agree to a 65/35 food alcohol ratio. 

If you pay attention to these things, you know this is a big deal and you know people fight like darn to keep the 50/50. They're also even willing if you've been in there, I don't know the square footage but the bar is probably five stools-ish wide, maybe you can fit five or six or seven. 

They're also even suggesting they'd be willing to reduce that all -- all to be able to serve alcohol between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. seven days a week. 

Which to me combined with all those -- all those -- allowing us to prohibit, open up their CUP and modernize it including prohibiting all those things, say this is a restaurant and we get to -- we will -- we will actually lock this in as a restaurant for the duration. 

Nobody's going to buy this property other than what it's valued for and what it's valued for will be no TVs, no live entertainment, closed by 10:00, can't serve past 10:00, can't serve before 5:00, no drink purchases, 65/35. 

And let me say it in a different way. The future owner has the right to put lots of TVs in that place to serve beer and wine with a fine wine establishment and plenty of alcohol at that bar until 11:00 seven nights a week. They get to have live entertainment. 

They get to serve alcohol over that bar. They get to serve alcohol without serving meals and they get to serve 50 percent of their, business as alcohol, not 35 percent of their business as alcohol. 

It probably sounds like I'm totally dedicated to them getting this. I'm not, I'm not. I would like it but I also, I'm one of five. I'm also listening to the community. What I'm really committed to is that we put in place something significant that reduces these hours. 

Not these hours and the hours that are out there that are actually legitimately making a difference in a negative way in the community. That's what we need to do. What I'm worried about a little bit with this property is that we may not get as sweet of a deal next time. 

What I think is valuable about agreeing to this tonight, and I know I'm advocating for this but I'm -- this needs to be a significant five-person decision. I -- I hope that, I mean, I'm looking at you three guys because I want you to hear that from me. 

I think there's a huge opportunity in recognizing what they're bringing that nobody's ever brought to us before. And it's easy to, it's easy to mock them for trading but I'll tell you, show -- I will -- I will always be in favor of any establishment that opens at past 10:00, at 11:00 at 12:00 that comes in and says if you let me serve alcohol until 10:00, I'll reduce my hours. We need to get rid of those hours. We just do. 

This isn't going to be the silver bullet that fixes our problem but I think -- I think that it's the impetus for us to start to finally talk about handling the capacity. The capacity is what is driving the -- what it -- the capacity is what's going to forever keep nightlife a problem in the community. 

I just want to -- to demonstrate what I'm saying about I think there's a benefit to doing this now but I think the greater benefit is that we, no bones, no joke really have a conversation that empowers staff. 

[2:19:15 on Granicus video]  I think we can use them as a -- as a guide, but regardless empower staff to actually start to look at legitimate things, trade, buy, I don't know, maybe there's other ways, that fairly for the businesses but totally fairly for the community start to reduce these hours. 

I'm committed to fixing this problem. And frankly -- and I'll just say one final note because lots of people throw rocks. I spend a lot of time on this problem. I may not have the right answer. This may be a totally nutty answer. 

I know I'm being -- I've been mocked quite a bit about it. But I haven't heard anybody offer anything better. And so it's easy to mock but we totally have a problem in town and when the economy comes back that problem is going to be back fuller than it is now. 

And don't mock. We live -- I live six- -- or fifteen blocks max from everybody in this room that lives here. I just do. We live totally sardine-packed together. 

Stop mocking the issue. Bring a better solution and I totally will go for it. But at the moment, no one's bringing a better solution. 

Let me close, one more thing, Mr. Mayor.

Mr. Tucker:  Yeah, go ahead.

Mr. DiVirgilio:  Thank you.

Mr. Tucker:  Mm-hmm.

Mr. DiVirgilio:  This document I put together was a little bit unorthodox. It's not common to how we operate. 

I felt like I -- this was unique and complex enough I needed to put it in language partly for myself, partly so my position was clear in the community and I just felt like if I didn't put it in writing I would miss the opportunity to really articulate it to you guys. 

I appreciate you, gentlemen, letting me try something that while allowed is unusual. I certainly said enough. I appreciate the time, and definitely welcome, you know, welcome the feedback to make it better, because those hours aren't going anywhere. Thank you sir.

Mr. Tucker:  Okay.

Mr. Bobko:  Mr. Mayor, I'll go.

Mr. Tucker:  Okay.

Mr. Bobko:  First thing I'd like to say is Michael, he lives on Third -- Second Street and I do live within about what is it, 10 blocks of him, but I live 10 blocks to the north not to the south, which is an inside joke to the guys in the building behind us. 

I too share Michael's view on this and I appreciate that he's put his neck out there. Again, I think that, the politically expedient thing to do and the myopic thing to do would be to simply deny this, beat one's chest and claim to be tough on an issue. 

[2:22:43 on Granicus video]  We have talked about alcohol as long as I've been on this council. It was one of the first things I talked about when I came on council and I'm still talking about it now.  I have come full circle and I realize that alcohol isn't necessarily the whole problem. 

I think the problem, or the solution if you will is the time. And my proof of that is this, if you want to do a thought experiment. I mean, imagine how the -- the Plaza is today if instead of having unlimited CUPs, every CUP on the Plaza was limited to being open until 10:00 p.m. It wouldn't be what it is today. 

I think that the time of things is probably the most important -- it is the critical aspect of this whole equation and we continually refuse to look that fact in the eye, instead talking about policy and all the rest of these things. 

I have always espoused a solid policy of not intensifying alcohol use in the city, especially on the Plaza after 1:00 a.m. Mr. Saemann asked a very salient question which was, you know, what is the precedent we're setting here if we allow these guys to get full alcohol and they stay up until, until 10:00 p.m.? My answer to that is fantastic. It would be a great precedent. 

I will say right now I would accept tonight every restaurant that wanted to come in, and bar in Hermosa Beach for full alcohol I will trade them tonight, everyone in town, if they agree to close by 10:00. I'd take that in a minute. 

I think you would not see nearly the problems you see about things, that we're concerned with. The gentleman who spoke and I'm sorry, I didn't get your name, it's okay, I don't -- I appreciate your comments and I noted that when you were speaking you said that you -- that these things were happening late at night, at midnight. 

I like to look at the facts of an issue and when you look at the other restaurants that are on the street that close at 10:00 with full alcohol, Hibachi, what was the other -- what are the other two? 

Hibachi, Club 705 and Union Cattle, what problems do we have with those? Union Cattle stays open later; I'm sorry, Hibachi and Club 705.  I don't think there is one. 

[2:25:20 on Granicus video]  So I think that this is again a very far-sighted solution to a problem that we are going to wrestle with. I absolutely agree with Mr. DiVirgilio, the issues that we're concerned with are simply in remission right now. 

They are coming back and we're going to deal with them over and over and over again until we finally come around to the idea that restaurants close at around 11:00 at night and whatever happens after that probably ain't a restaurant. 

We don't want to face that yet, we talk about policy. I anxiously await for the first time we can talk about a policy that gets three votes, that accepts those facts. 

If you ask the restaurateurs in town they will tell you my -- my dinner business stops at 11:00. Anything that happens before 11:00 is dinner. Everything that happens after 11:00 is something else. 

I think that this restaurant is willing to close at 10:00. I think there is no question that it would be a restaurant. We could condition them to be a restaurant and we would take that, as Michael says, that excess capacity, we could take that off the table forever. Is that a popular decision? No. 

I guess then I am also on the dark side, whatever side it is that Michael has been painted into. That's not the case at all. I'm not a -- I'm not necessarily in favor of this restaurant although I enjoy it. 

I'm in favor of putting in place long-term solutions that will solve problems. And like it or not, we haven't solved this problem. No one has come up with anything new to solve this problem. 

This problem will persist and it will not go away. There were a couple of other points that I feel we have to at least clarify and then I want to talk about Ms. Liu's letter because I -- I thank her for writing such a clear, position to the council. 

One thing that one of my colleagues talked about is zoning by barter. This, we have to zone by barter. There's only two ways to do it. 

One way is to zone by barter where the applicant or the business owner, the property owner, the person who owns the vested right which is a question I asked of staff when we got started, comes in and agrees to trade something or we take it from them. And we can only take it from them when it's gone too far, when there's a problem. 

And if you don't believe that we're going to take it from you, you can go ask the guys at Dragon, now Waterman's, Shore and Blue 32 about how that happens. By the time we take it from them, it's too late; okay? 

The other way to do it is like we're doing it now, which is to actually compromise with the applicant and find a solution that's -- that's beneficial to the applicant and to the city. Of course at the other end of the spectrum is litigation, which again these in my opinion short-term politically expedient views tend to lead us to. I do not favor -- although I'm a lawyer, I do not favor litigation. It's a very -- it's a very inefficient and I think, poor way to formulate policy. 

I want to talk about Ms. Liu's letter, I hope you don't mind. I thought it was an excellent letter.  There are a couple of statement in here that I -- I want to talk to because I think that we share the same -- I know we share the same concerns. In the fourth paragraph down she says Buona Vita's request is especially troubling of the -- because of the fact that the conditional use permits as we understand them run with the property, not the business, parenthetical. That is correct, they do. Back to the letter. 

Therefore, if Buona Vita, parentheses, a nice quiet eatery, is granted a general alcohol permit, any business that subsequently occupies Buona Vita's location will also have that permit to use at its will. That is correct. That is correct. 

What Mr. DiVirgilio has proposed and what I support is instead of leaving it open so that some future business can come there and stay open until 12:00 we take that excess ability off the table and forever limit it to 10:00, which is what we would be doing. 

I'm moving forward a sentence. There is no guarantee how Buona Vita itself may change once it has a general alcohol permit. That is correct again. 

But we can't control what's going to happen in the future. Someone in the future could show up, take over the business and they could stay open until 2:00 a.m. hypothetically. Tonight if we do what we've proposed, that will never be a possibility. 

Again, all of this is premised on the foundation that I believe if we closed everything at 10:00, the problems that bedevil us would be gone. Maybe that's an incorrect assumption, but if you ask the people who own restaurants they'll tell you, again, that's when their dinners are. 
And one of the other sentences she says however, we really don't know what they will ask for six months or a year or two down the road. Again, I absolutely agree with you. 

[2:30:10 on Granicus video]  If we do what we're proposing tonight, we'll never have to worry about that. Hermosa already has more than its share of late-night bars and clubs. I absolutely agree with you. 

I don't think however -- and again, I don't have any proof of this other than the other businesses that have general alcohol and close at 10:00, that if we let this restaurant have general alcohol and close at 10:00, it will not be a late-night bar or a club. Anyway, okay. I think I have one more point. 

Janice, you looked at me and you said that when we were on UPAC, we talked about having alcohol migrate up from the Plaza. I absolutely agree with you. I, uh -- I do not want to do that. 

I hope that my explanation makes clear that I am trying to ensure, not encourage, that that never happens. And the way, the only way -- because again, I may not be here, after a couple of years. 

I probably -- well, the only way I can ensure that what we've built, what we took so much care and -- and put so much effort into creating will remain what it is today is by doing something like this where I can control the future by controlling the CUP. 

If we don't do this, there is no telling what's going to happen and a future council, no matter what we think, may sit in these chairs and decide that they want to have full bars up and down Upper Pier Avenue. I'm simply trying to prevent that. So again, I think that, for the people who spoke, I share your concerns. 

I am empathetic to your -- to what -- to what problems you experience now. But I'm not trying to make them worse, I'm trying to do something that will make them better but not just better until I leave this chair, but I'm saying better forever. And the only way we can do that is by curtailing the CUP. 

So again, I also wanted to thank the planning commission, for what they've done. I know that we put them in a heck of a bind anytime we ask them to do something with alcohol. We'll talk about something else that they've done, later on tonight which I think they did a fantastic job on. 

But I would like to again ask my colleagues to take a longer view of this, take a strategic view of this as opposed to the tactical view that we've taken over the years, which has landed us in the problems that we have today.

Mr. Tucker:  Okay. Howard?

MR. FISHMAN:  Actually, like strategic planning and, I want to thank the applicant for, their creativity in, requesting something in exchange for something. 

I don't think -- and I've been here a year but having followed the whole alcohol issue for many years, I've never seen anybody come up with some innovative plan in which to sacrifice business hours. 

And you know, when you talk about well you all ran on a platform, yeah, I'm -- I'm guilty as charged too. I ran on a platform not to extend hours of alcohol and, I don't support extending hours of alcohol. 

When you have those in some cases if there's a due process issue, that's something different. But what I -- what I like, what I'm hearing from my colleagues is, it's time to look at this strategically and not just look at it at the present but look at it more towards the future perspective. 

Because I think right now there's a window that's been opened that can give the city an opportunity to create some type of policy that will ensure that if anybody wants to request full alcohol that there are conditions that would need to be met. 

And frankly, I don't -- I don't see a difference but this is just my own opinion. When you talk about alcohol to me, alcohol is alcohol. I mean, if you're drinking beer and wine and you have a a martini, you're still drinking alcohol. 

You know what the application obviously wishes to do is to simply expand their liquid menu. I mean, they are serving alcohol now. They've run a good business and they'll continue to run a good business. 

I like though the fact that we can potentially do something to reduce hours here. I like the idea of 10:00 closings; I like the idea of eliminating televisions and entertainment. 

I like the idea of expanding the -- the menu, from the food to -- to alcohol to -- from a 50/50 to a 65/35 to ensure that there's more food being generated than alcohol. 

But I -- I can't support the full license, and I can't support it because absent a policy, I don't want to get into a bartering system with with restaurants. 

I don't want to get into this, you know, every other month someone else is going to come up here and seek something from us. 

So if we can get a policy in place, but -- but I want to add something to the policy that hasn't been discussed, and I think this will also help reduce the intensification. 

I believe Councilman DiVirgilio is on the right path. I think we really have to look beyond just granting this particular license. I think we have to look at this thing from a -- a total city perspective. 

What I would like to see is if there's any way to add in to some kind of policy, some type of a cap where we cap the number of restaurants for Upper Pier Avenue. 

And, you know, we have a -- as an example we have a cyclery shop up on Upper Pier and maybe one day he decides to sell and here comes another restaurant. And, now you're going to have another issue with, you know, more beer and wine coming in, more alcohol coming in. 

And I think if we can control the number of restaurants that wish to open in this city then -- and I don't think the present restaurant owners are going to mind about that. I think actually they're going to say hey, it's good for us. We got our restaurant in and -- but I think if we have some kind of a cap on Upper Pier, start there with restaurants and, I think if you can put a cap in place, put a number in there and not to exceed, then I think we've addressed half the battle right there by capping a number. 

So I'd like to take the policy as I call it and take it even a step further so we're also -- so now we're talking about reducing hours, eliminating entertainment, increasing food consumption and now capping a number of restaurants that can operate, and look at it on Upper Pier Avenue. 

We need to have some strategic planning, what type of businesses do we want to continue to attract in this city? Do we want to continue to to attract more restaurants which ultimately brings more, you know, beer and wine and full alcohol or do we want to try to limit the number of restaurants and bars that ultimately -- restaurants as we know sometimes morph into bars. 

So if we can cap and we can have a policy, I could support the concept, conceptually but, until we have such a policy in place, it -- it -- I'm not comfortable with providing this restaurant a full liquor license for those reasons.

[2:37:55 on Granicus video]  Mr. Tucker: Okay. I think everything we've heard from my four colleagues has a lot of merit. There are a lot of things that we've tried in the past and we've failed to do and tonight we're bringing them back up again on both sides of this issue. 

We as a council have wrestled with this for many, many years. I've probably wrestled with it for the last 20 since I was on the planning commission. 

I remember when I first got on the planning commission we had another Italian restaurant downtown that came to us and said you know, I need -- I got to have alcohol to compete. 

And everybody said yeah, he's been here a long time. I think it's a good idea. Gave him full alcohol, he turns around and sells it and then it was a -- a place where we've had problems in the past and every now and then it comes back again. 

So we don't -- I don't give these away lightly, after that night. And I've always wanted some kind of a policy but we've, we've always danced around it. 

When we did Upper Pier we had hearing after hearing, everybody wanted a family atmosphere and I think that's what we've created up there. 

And it was stated earlier, I -- I mean, the concrete's barely dry up there really and -- and we're looking at this, changing this usage to full alcohol. 

People go and come with businesses as Mr. Duclos pointed out, this is a land use item that it increases the value of this property; it increases the value of the business. And there's never any piece of property or any business that's not for sale. 

If somebody comes in and says I'll give you X bucks, here are the keys, I'm gone, have a good time. We talk about these CUPs that they're proposing, these can be changed by another council, they're not locked in infinity. 

Anybody can come in and try to get another council as they've all stated, another group of councilmen say yeah, we'll roll you back to -- we'll give you 2:00 again, we'll do this, we'll do that. 

So I -- I think we need to -- to really look hard at what we're about to do here. I know the planning commission when they voted -- they voted five to zero. Staff recommended against this but they had all these facts that you are proposing before them. 

It wasn't like all of the sudden this is a new item before us and I think they understood all that. I think they're a very competent group of individuals who care about this city and they really have taken our direction. 

We sit up here and we say we don't want to intensify, we don't want this, and they take that to heart. But yet we've never -- and they -- to me they kind of took our arm waving as I call it and voted and said this is what they council's direction has been. 

Staff picked up on it and I feel that we as a council need to step back and maybe look at these proposals that Councilman DiVirgilio has presented and -- and we've all really presented, and try to get some kind of a policy. 

But it's not -- tonight I don't feel that I want to grant this because there again I think we need to think about it a lot more. There's no real competition on Upper Pier. That whole area is all beer and wine. 

You go down to, our city to the south, in their south end of town which they call the Riviera Village, they're all beer and wine, they're all packed. And there's been I believe five restaurants that have opened up in economic hard times right now and they're all thriving. 

I've been there, I've seen them, I've had experience with them from the ground up and they're all -- they're all very busy. I think sometimes we just, you know, everybody thinks full alcohol is a magic bullet, it's going to make me a much better place to be, to come to. 

But I -- I don't feel that you've been in business for a long time, people come in for beer and wine, they know you have it and I think they probably don't really come in for the alcohol at all. They come in for your food. 

I had a friend once who had to fight the ABC to get a beer and wine license. By the time he got it he says I don't need it, they're coming here for the food. I don't even know why I hassled with it. 

And I think really that's your -- your position. But I -- I just feel that right now we as a council really need to sit down maybe even with -- and I've said this many times with the planning commission and get a policy as -- as, Michael, as you pointed out here tonight, and how we can do this. 

We just can't take things away from these people. Some of these places have, on the Plaza been there for 40, 50, 60 years and they have a, you know, a CUP that's maybe four sentences, but they're allowed 2:00. 

So it's not that easy just to roll them back. So I'm not -- I'm in favor tonight of upholding what the planning commission did. I think they did the right thing. They listened to us. I think the residents when we did Upper Pier said we don't want to -- Upper Pier wants its own identity and that was very clear at every meeting we had. 

And with a full alcohol at this time, I think that identity will be lost. We need this separation. And yes, we need to work on a lot of other things, enforcement in the neighborhoods, how we enforce, we have a very short staff. But I think right now we just -- we just need to curtail any more alcohol. 

So those are my thoughts, so would someone like to --

Mr. DiVirgilio:  Mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion.