It will still be some time before a bottle of hard liquor gets sold legally inside the borders of Benton County, but observers got a glimpse of the region’s changing reality last week as the initial round of state liquor store permit application hearings unfolded in Little Rock.
According to state law, permits to operate liquor stores are distributed by county based on population. When Benton County voters overwhelmingly passed a measure to go “wet”last November, that put 55 new permits in one of the state’s most populous and prosperous counties up for grabs.
The state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board approves the licenses, based on recommendations from its staff and existing laws defining who can possess a permit and where the stores can operate.
That sounds simple, but like most states, Arkansas has a maze-like collection of rules and regulations that must be navigated in order to qualify for one of those permits. A number of applicants found out the hard way that getting started in Arkansas’ liquor trade is no easy task.
In all, 69 applicants qualified for consideration for the 55 permits. A lottery determined the order in which they’d be heard.
Over three days of hearings, only 39 applications were approved while 15 were denied. One other application hearing was continued while more information is collected. Fourteen more applicants are waiting to see if they’ll get a hearing after the appeals process for the initial denials runs its course.
Many of the denials had to do with the location of the proposed stores. A number were rejected because they would have violated the state’s prohibition on liquor stores within 1,000 feet of a school or church. One unlucky applicant found his location 999 feet from one church and 998 feet from another. But the rules are the rules.
The board rejected - correctly, we might add - one creative approach: The applicant wanted to get a permit for a location in a residential area, open a store for one day to satisfy the permit requirements, then look to move the store to an underserved location once he could see where other permits were granted. While the applicant deserves credit for thinking outside the box, the board rightly declined to give him a signifi cant competitive advantage.
Another series of debates on Arkansas’ bizarre regulations went a little better for one applicant.
Among the many arcane liquor rules is a prohibition against a license holder having ownership in more than one liquor store in Arkansas. Another law prevents common branding of separately owned stores under the same franchise.
These rules came under discussion when Sarah Gildehaus’ application for a store near Bentonville’s Rainbow Curve came up for review. Sarah Gildehaus’ husband, Roger, owns the Macadoodles liquor stores in Springdale and Caverna, Mo.
Sarah Gidehaus told the board that she’s divested her personal interests in her husband’s company and won’t operate her store in Bentonville as a Macadoodles. She also said Roger will have no ownership of her store. This despite a sign that stood on the property in Bentonville for years proclaiming it a future home for the franchise. The sign, by the way, is now gone.
After some discussion of the matter, the board finally approved Sarah Gildehaus’ application. The store will be called, cleverly, “Guess Who.”
Not all the creative thinking went unrewarded.
Opinion, Pages 10 on 07/21/2013