Sunday, July 11, 2010
News, In this Issue..., Politics, Atlanta

Open all night

A City Councilman pushes later bar closing times and launches an experiment to help Atlanta reclaim its place as the party capital of the South

Stephanie Ramage

By Stephanie Ramage

For decades, Atlanta was synonymous with booze, bar-hopping and babes.

Then, in January 2000, Atlanta hosted the Super Bowl, and two men were stabbed to death in Buckhead Village. Baltimore Ravens player Ray Lewis was named a suspect in the double killing. Though Lewis was later cleared of any crime except a misdemeanor charge of obstruction of justice, his high profile made the incident an exclamation point in a litany of offenses recited by Buckhead residents as reasons to rein in the village.  Those ranged from public urination—on the lawns of Buckhead’s inhabitants—to rape and aggravated assault.

By December 2003, the village’s problems were bringing the wrath of Buckhead to bear on City Hall, and the City Council hastened bar closing times across the city from 4 a.m. to 2:30 a.m.

Last week, however, Councilman Kwanza Hall suggested that Buckhead had hit critical mass because bars in much of the rest of the city had closed down. There was nowhere to go but Buckhead, and its jumbled village of watering holes soon became overwhelmed. Developer Ben Carter bought a chunk of the village to shut it down not long after the bar hours were cut, and eventually Buckhead Village was scraped off Atlanta’s face as if it were a cancerous growth. The plan, according to published interviews with Carter, was to replace it with something more upscale, like Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive.

Unfortunately, says Hall, killing off Buckhead Village and shortening bar hours across the city has reformed Atlanta to the point that it has lost much of its appeal, not only for money-spending out-of-towners but also for local night owls.

The remedy, he says, is designated entertainment districts, areas where bars and clubs can stay open later. Hall has doggedly pursued restoration of the 4 a.m. closing time since he was elected in 2006 to represent Downtown, Auburn Avenue, the Old Fourth Ward and Little Five Points. Over and over again, his council colleagues have said the issue is closed, but in January he acquired a powerful ally: newly elected Mayor Kasim Reed, who said during a Jan. 5 press conference that he wanted to restore the city’s nightlife in “entertainment districts.”

Hall sees later bar and restaurant closing times as a way to nurture the city’s multi-million-dollar music and film industry. After all, many aspiring musicians and actors tend to rely on jobs at bars and restaurants to subsidize their careers, and once they’ve made it big, they need somewhere to relax—other than New York.

At present, only bars at Downtown’s less-than-fabulous Underground have a 4 a.m. closing time, an exception that was supposed to help the financially hemorrhaging mall attract tourists.

So on July 6, Hall and Councilman Michael Bond introduced legislation to designate the Auburn Avenue/Edgewood neighborhoods as an entertainment district with bars closing at 4 a.m. Hall calls it a “pilot program,” and if the council approves it and the experiment works, the model could be spread to other parts of town. Along with the proposal is what Hall describes as “companion legislation” to reform the way the city goes about approving bar permits. Under that proposal, the council’s Public Safety and Legal Administration committee would put together a citizen’s panel to review applications for liquor licenses.

“Right now, anyone that wants to can apply for a liquor license, and too often, even if the neighborhoods are against it, it still gets granted,” says Hall, who believes giving neighborhoods a more direct role in the license approval process is key to helping them feel comfortable with entertainment districts.

CITIES ACROSS NATION EXTENDING BAR HOURS

Over the past couple of years, cities of all sizes have seen their revenue shrink as restaurants and bars have taken a financial hit thanks to the worldwide economic crisis. In April, Nebraska’s governor signed legislation allowing towns to stretch bar hours from midnight to 2 a.m. In May, St. Petersburg, Fla., replaced its 2 a.m. bar closing time with a 3 a.m. closing time over the objections of its police chief, who warned of more crime and overburdened public safety resources. The idea was to keep up with Tampa’s 3 a.m. cutoff.
 

After the first weekend of the later closing time, St. Pete's Police Chief Chuck Harmon was able to indulge in an “I told you so” moment when he reported a 22 percent increase in police calls compared with the previous weekend. Local bar owners, however, said they didn’t notice any more unruly behavior than usual. 

    Meanwhile, the battle over 24-hour bars rages on in Wildwood, N.J., a small beach town with a summertime population of about 200,000, according to Mayor Gary DeMarzo. DeMarzo has been a cop for 20 years (he’s in the middle of a lawsuit over whether he has to resign from the police force to be mayor), and he wants Wildwood’s bars to be open around the clock on an experimental basis in August and September of this year to see if the additional revenue might alleviate the town’s financial crunch without unduly upsetting residents.

When contacted by The Sunday Paper, DeMarzo is in a public hearing on the matter. It lasts until after 10 p.m. Most of the comments, he says, are about things like “shrubbery being wrecked” by drunks.

“But that’s not a bar problem,” he says. “That’s a police enforcement problem.”

Wildwood’s bars are already open 20 hours a day; they are closed between 3 and 7 a.m. The four-hour gap is referred to by locals as the “bar break,” and it’s then, says DeMarzo, that there are public safety problems. Keeping the bars open for 24 hours, he says, would avert the present hazard of having all the town’s drinking establishments dump a wave of revelers onto residential streets at the same time.

DeMarzo says he’s fighting blight, trying to stop more bars, restaurants and clubs from shutting down and leaving their abandoned shells to scare away even more business from a town that “doesn’t need a stimulus, it needs the cardiac paddles, the defibrillators.”

The problems that people associate with bars, he says, are problems any town would have regardless of the hours that bars keep. Wildwood’s bars used to be open until 5 a.m., he explains, but a bar fight in the late ’90s that claimed the life of a patron put the kibosh on that.

So, wouldn’t bars staying open longer increase the chance of such violence, or of the drunk driving that kills Americans every day?

“I can’t police the world,” says DeMarzo. “Why don’t we ban laser pens? After all, you could blind someone with them. Or Styrofoam cups that turtles could choke on? Or plastic shopping bags that dolphins get their noses stuck in? Do you really want me to tell you when to go to sleep and when to wake up? Ultimately, if you want to get bombed and get behind the wheel, the choice is yours.”

According to data provided by the Atlanta Police Department, the Buckhead Village saw about a 43 percent drop in police-related incidents of all types after bar hours were cut to 2:30 a.m. Statistics show there were 168 assaults in 2003 on APD beat 205, which included the village,  compared with 117 in 2004. Disorderly conduct reports also dropped, from 109 in 2003 to 88 in 2004.

Oddly, however, public drunkenness reports stayed almost exactly the same—113 in 2003 and 112 in 2004. Even odder, DUI arrests rose significantly after the bar hours were shortened. The number of DUIs in Buckhead Village jumped from 103 before the rollback to 125 after. Some police officers attribute the increase to more patrons hitting the streets at the same time.

Atlanta’s police officers are divided on extending bar hours. An informal survey of dozens of APD cops elicited diametrically opposed responses. Some officers welcome the longer hours; others adamantly oppose them. [Editor’s note: The APD does not allow unauthorized comments from its officers, who are disciplined for speaking to the press without permission. They spoke to The Sunday Paper on condition of anonymity, to protect themselves from retaliation.]

One officer notes that police were pulled from other zones to help patrol the city’s bar districts when the closing time was 4 a.m.

“There will definitely be an increase in crime, traffic, calls for service, etc., associated with extended bar hours,” another says. “This is true of any event, business, party, parade, permit, new business opening, etc. The more people you bring in any area, the more crime you will statistically see, period. Bring in alcohol and you’re sure to have issues. … If we extend the hours, there has to be a plan of action to deal with the associated rise in the number of customers who could become victims of people who target late-night establishments. …There also has to be an increase in police and police presence to handle any extended hours, which is unlikely given the current budget and lack of resources." But he does not “believe that hours should be extended for one area of the city without extending the hours for all areas of the city. Everyone should have equal opportunity and protection under the law.”

The same officer says he supports bars staying open 24 hours: “For budgetary reasons alone, we should allow sales anytime, ensure we are getting our share of the by-the-drink taxes, allow anyone who wants to stay open to do so, and require off-duty officers and security to maintain order,” he says. “Each zone commander, with the cooperation of the business, could assist in creating plans to ensure the public is safe.”

Another police officer is even more enthusiastic: “Prior to the bars closing so early, Atlanta was known for having places to party. That was a large part of the attraction to the city. Atlanta needs tourists, and the city needs to attract businesses and their employees. We need the tax money!”

He says people being cooped up inside with nothing to do except drugs causes crime. “So please, tell your readers to go for it,” he says. “Remember, crime is part of a healthy city, and no matter what we [the police] do, if someone wants to shoot someone over a beef, they are going to do it. The only difference is the where and when.” SP