Correction: The Dollar General Store on Broadway and Roosevelt Road in Little Rock was granted a state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board beer sales permit Wednesday. This headline misstated the location of the Dollar General Store in question.
The state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board granted a beer sales permit Wednesday to the Dollar General Store on Broadway in Little Rock.
But the Capitol Zoning District Commission contends that the store still can't sell alcohol until it gets approval from the commission, which governs property around the state Capitol, and amends its zoning permit.
The store had to get approval from the zoning commission before opening in 2013. As part of that process, the property owners who lease the building to Dollar General said beer would not be sold. The commission approved a conditional-use permit on that basis, commission Executive Director Boyd Maher testified before the beverage control board Wednesday.
Originally the director of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Administration Division denied Dollar General District Manager Justin Pelletier's request for a beer-sales permit for the store at 2415 S. Broadway last year. But Pelletier appealed to the board.
Maher, several neighborhood leaders, the Downtown Neighborhood Association, pastors, residents and Ward 1 City Director Erma Hendrix attended Wednesday's hearing to voice their objection to the permit. Little Rock's police chief also wrote a letter objecting.
After testimony from both sides, the four-member Alcoholic Beverage Control Board voted 3-1 to grant the permit. Chairman Mickey Powell, of Batesville, voted against. Voting in favor were Martin Silverfield of Little Rock, Jeff Mitchell of Fayetteville and Chris Palmer of Little Rock.
Mitchell said he nearly voted against the permit because residents originally were told that beer wouldn't be sold. He even warned Pelletier that Dollar General should tread carefully or the neighborhood might boycott the store.
Maher said that Pelletier will still have to go back before the zoning commission to get the store's conditional-use permit amended to allow beer sales before it can legally sell alcohol. Dollar General attorney Ben Shipley acknowledged that the company understood it would have to do that.
Initially at Wednesday's meeting, Shipley said the national chain didn't have a beer and wine program in place when it opened in 2013.
"The beer program and wine program was not in place even on a national basis at the time the Dollar General store was built on Broadway, and later there was a corporate decision to go ahead and roll out the beer and wine program subsequently a year and a half later," Shipley said.
But when Mitchell pointed out that Shipley's printed presentation stated that Dollar General stores have been selling beer in Arkansas since 2011, Shipley changed his statement and said that he wasn't privy to corporate decisions related to the beer sales and said, "I guess at the time of zoning [for the Broadway store] there was not plans to sell beer here."
The statement in 2013 that beer would not be sold was germane to the commission approving the conditional-use permit to allow the store to operate there, Maher said. He added that a lobbyist hired by Dollar General was present at the time.
Before Wednesday's hearing began, Powell, the chairman, told witnesses that the board would not consider any moral arguments against alcohol or testimony about unpleasant situations involving alcohol when considering the permit.
Downtown Neighborhood Association President Robin Loucks said residents didn't have moral objections as much as they had safety concerns. She presented an incident report list that showed there were 27 alcohol-related arrests in a half-mile radius of the store last year.
Silverfield replied that he would think Loucks and her neighbors would welcome Dollar General.
"They have more beer licenses or permits than anyone in the state of Arkansas and they have no violations for selling to minors. They've been wonderful stewards of permits. ... I'd think you might welcome them because they probably police what they sell better than any other one," Silverfield said.
He made the comment twice more that if he could choose who sells alcohol in his neighborhood that he would prefer it be Dollar General.
Hendrix said Dollar General stores are mostly located in areas where poorer people live.
"Several of you live out west," she said to the board members. "If you can show me a Dollar [General] store out west, I'll give you $1,000. It's just not there."
The Broadway store has plans to sell unrefrigerated beer in an 8-square-foot section of its building if the zoning commission amends the conditional-use permit. A date for the zoning board to take up that issue is contingent upon when the company submits a request to amend its permit.
Metro on 01/22/2015