Winona debates if liquor licenses a problem

People like to drink in Winona, and the numbers back it up. The city has 91 liquor licenses - one for every 335 people.

Compare that to 550 people per license in Faribault, 447 in Austin, and 394 in Owatonna, and Winona has more licenses per capita than any similar-sized city in Minnesota.

But whether so many licenses is a problem depends on who you ask. Some community leaders say that much availability may be leading to more crime, violence and societal woes. Others say the effects are overstated. Either way, the city has no plans to curb the number of licenses it issues.

"There is a little problem - it's not a main problem," Mayor Jerry Miller said. "If there are half the numbers of licenses, you're still going to be able to get it."

Winona's relationship with liquor isn't just old, it's historical, dating back to when the city was first founded.

"If you look at those times," Miller said, "men would walk to work and on their way home and stop at a neighborhood bar."

In those days, liquor was controlled mostly by federal and state laws, said Marlene Kjelsberg, supervisor of the Alcohol Enforcement Section of the Minnesota Department of Safety. But after Prohibition, as liquor laws became more lax and attitudes changed, cities gained power to issue licenses.

The city of Winona didn't take responsibility for issuing licenses to bars, liquor stores, restaurants and private holders until the mid-1970s.

Since then, it has granted far more licenses than it turned down. In fact, the City Council has rejected just two requests for liquor licenses in the past decade, both times because the applicant had a criminal background.

Kjelsberg can't explain why today certain cities have a high number of liquor licenses while others don't.

"Some don't want to issue over a set amount, but some see it as a money maker," she said.

In Winona, alcohol is big business, fueled by a demand that sustains the high number of licenses.

Retailers want to be in a big market, so they come to Winona, Miller said.

And students from two four-year colleges help keep the booze flowing.

It is a fair assumption that the high number of bars reflects on the high number of students, Saint Mary's University Dean of Students Tim Gossen said, but fewer licenses may not lead to less drinking.

"I don't think there is an issue like some people say we have," he said. "It is part of society to have alcohol available."

Gossen doesn't think students realize how many bars and retail liquor stores are available to them.

"I don't even know," he said. "But the city of Winona has made it very easy for students to purchase alcohol."

At Winona State University, students are within walking distance of the bar scene. But WSU Dean of Students Karen Johnson said the university's location has little effect on the amount of drinking.

"If students really want to get alcohol they will do so," she said. "But I do prefer the bars to be further away from campus."

Students may be the most visible drinkers - noise complaints, public urination tickets, littering - but the effects of alcohol run much deeper, Winona Police Chief Paul Bostrack said.

About half the department's 18,000 calls a year involve alcohol. Of the more serious calls - sexual assault, disorderly conduct and thefts - most involve alcohol, Bostrack said.

"We have an issue with alcohol," the chief said. "A lot of time revolves around it. There is a problem."

But the problem may not ever be solved, he said.

"There is no silver bullet," Bostrack said. "It takes a lot of effort to address the issues."

Researchers agree.

Few studies inside the U.S. have measured the effects the number of liquor licenses has on cities. But Dr. Paul J. Gruenewald, a senior research scientist at the Prevention Research Center, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in California, concludes that the more licenses an area has, the more troubles it will have to deal with. He co-authored "Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity," a research analysis on the effects of alcohol published in 2003.

"Higher concentrations of outlets is generally bad," he said. "There is no question in my mind that increasing concentration of outlets brings problems."

That means violence in the bars, drunken driving or chronic social problems such as domestic violence, he said. But many residents can miss those larger societal problems for easier to see effects, like public urination and beer-can-spotted lawns.

Trouble usually manifests in areas where bars are clustered, he said.

"A city with a heavy concentration shows a sign of (emotional) ill health," Gruenewald said. "The city has to weigh benefits of money versus social problems."

Gruenewald recommends that cities cap licenses, but there's no magic number.

"There's no threshold on a good number of outlets," Gruenewald. "I recommend spreading the outlets out a bit. The easy way to do this is to stop giving out licenses in over-concentrated areas. As bars close, don't re-open another. By thinning them out, you are doing a service to the community."

Bill Ponicki, another research scientist at the Prevention Research Center, said its not easy to trace the problems directly to the bars.

"Businesses seen as being a social nuisance may not be allowed to open in 'better' neighborhoods due to zoning and other restrictions," he said. "So when you see more problems like crime in areas with lots of bars or liquor stores, which causes which?"

Ponicki said he has seen unpublished research showing that liquor stores and taverns bring more problems to a community, while more restaurants with liquor licenses can bring fewer problems.

"Maybe it's just that full-service restaurants tend to be in wealthier areas, whereas bars and liquor stores tend to be in poorer areas," he said. "It's a messy field of study."

LICENSE HOLDERS WEIGH IN

For those who deal with liquor every day, the problem lies with the people drinking - not the number of licenses.

Poots Tavern opened selling low-alcohol beer - beer with 3.5 percent alcohol by volume or less - when Prohibition ended in December 1933. It holds one of the oldest liquor licenses in Winona.

Owner Matthew Pellowski, now 53, doesn't see a problem with the amount of liquor available.

"It's not the number of licenses that's the problem," he said. "It's the irresponsible people."

Pellowski bought his bar in 1976 just before he turned 20. He didn't start selling hard liquor until 1992, when customers began asking for it.

"We needed to expand," he said. "We had to give the people what they wanted."

There's not much competition between the bars, he said, or at least he doesn't try to compete to get people in his doors. They all have an understanding to just do the job and people will come, he said.

"If you go up to Rochester, there are not many bars," he said. "It's pretty boring. Winona is a party town."

There is not a shortage of work or customers for Pellowski. The bartender works more than 70 hours a week, and sometimes drives patrons home at night.

But not every bar has an over-crowding of people.

Winona's newest bar liquor license holder, Jeremy Presson, owner of Club 151, closed his bar two months ago. Doors were open for about a year.

It was the demographics that convinced him to open the doors at first. He was looking for a bar with a good location that would attract a lot of people. Presson made a small dance floor connected to the bar area to stick out from the bars nearby.

But he didn't expect all the competition. The highest being from Gabby's, which is just at the other end of the block.

"You have to have something special to draw people in," he said. "With the drink specials you just break even. It hardly seems worth it."

Even with dozens of bars just blocks away, Presson doesn't think the quantity of the liquor is a problem.

"A lot of people make more out of the issue than it is," he said.

Once a year, the city council reviews a list of license holders and chooses whether to renew them. It can revoke the license at any time, but that rarely happens. And city officials will grant almost any request for a new license, as long as the applicant passes a background check, Miller said.

But even the mayor acknowledges Winona may have a drinking problem - the solution is what continues to elude the city.

And until one is found, it's bottoms up.

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Information from: [[link:http://www.winonadailynews.com type:ext text:Winona Daily News]]

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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