By Amanda Waldroupe, Staff Writer
The City is continuing its push to create an alcohol impact area in downtown Portland, despite the dismal failure of a voluntary agreement between the City of Portland and downtown convenience store owners to not carry certain kinds of malt liquor and fortified wine.
On Thursday, Aug. 12, a public meeting was held between representatives of the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, the Portland Police Bureau and storeowners. The meeting was the first step in the process to petition the state and the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) to officially designate downtown Portland as an alcohol impact area.
If the OLCC did so, convenience stores in the downtown area could not sell beer by the can, any malt liquor that contains more than 5.75 percent alcohol by volume, and wine containing more than 14 percent alcohol. Microbrews are exempt.
The impact area would encompass downtown, Old Town, and parts of the Goose Hollow and Northwest neighborhoods. It would be the first alcohol impact area in the state.
The City first tried to get store owners to voluntarily agree not to sell the types of alcohol in question. The initiative, called “VibrantPDX” failed, because only 9 out 43 stores signed the agreement.
The purpose of the program is to decrease what proponents call “street drinking,” or drinking in public. It is illegal in Portland, and offenders are given a citation. The Portland Police Bureau gave 1,700 citations for public drinking in that area in 2009. That accounts for 55 percent of all public drinking in the city.
About 20 storeowners attended the Aug. 12 meeting to reiterate their vehement frustration and lack of support for creating an alcohol impact area. They are worried that the restrictions will negatively effect their business.
Storeowners who supported the “VibrantPDX” iniative, however, are now opposed to the alcohol restrictions the Office of Neighborhood Involvement is currently proposing. The “VibrantPDX” agreement exempted 16-ounce cans from the list of restrictions. 16-ounce cans are no longer restricted. “That’s 30 percent of the market or more,” Doug Peterson, the owner of Peterson’s Convenience Stores, said at the meeting.
Peterson also brought three bottles of wine with him to the meeting — a merlot by Duck Pond, and zinfandels by BV Coastal and Kendall Jackson. All are extremely popular products at his stores, he said, and all three bottles contain at least, if not more than, 14.5 percent alcohol. And some wines, he said, have slightly more alcohol in them than prior vintages. “You could have an illegal item and violation by accident,” he said.
“It is overly broad,” Peterson said, referring to the list of current restrictions. “That was loud and clear during the Vibrant PDX discussions.”
Mike Boyer, a crime prevention specialist at the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, says it will be possible as discussions continue that more exemptions can be added to the final list given to the OLCC. “If there is one thing that can be made clear,” he says, “it is that this is a public process.”
The Oregonian has reported that the OLCC’s chairman, Phil Lang, supports alcohol impact areas.
The Aug. 12 meeting was the first step of many in a long and involved process to create an alcohol impact area. The Office of Neighborhood Involvement will petition the City Council to ask the OLCC to create an alcohol impact area. That is expected to happen sometime in mid-September. From there, it could take almost a year before the OLCC creates the impact area.
Boyer says that there are no other programs or initiatives that have been planned to combat street drinking. That includes increasing the funding for alcohol and drug treatment. But, Boyer says, those ideas are not being excluded.
To critics who say this is a Band-Aid approach to a larger problem,” Steve Mattsson, manager of the Hooper Detox Center, says “I’m fine with Band-Aids. They’re very useful. But as part of a comprehensive solution, I have no problem with it whatsoever.”
Hooper admits about 10,000 people to its sobering station each year. The population Hooper deals with are predominately homeless aclohol and addicts,” Mattsson says. “That’s the group we’re most concern with, and the cheap high alcohol really is marketed to them, and we deal with them on a daily bases, and it really does have a negative effect.”
Pauline Gustafson of Georgia’s Grocery at Southwest 12th Avenue and Stark Street is a storeowner who is vehemently opposed to creating an impact area. She shares Peterson’s concerns that her business will be affected. But she also does not think it will solve any problems associated with street drinking. They will just go somewhere else in Portland where that type of alcohol is sold, she thinks.
“Portland has been trying to get rid of people on the street for as long as I can remember. This is yet another way to get them out of sight,” she said during the meeting.
