MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — If you're looking to apply for a new liquor license in Milledgeville, you've got to wait 90 days.
The city put a temporary hold on new permits to sell hard liquor or drinks at a restaurant. It's to give time to adjust some rules. The resolution was adopted at last Tuesday's City Council meeting.
The moratorium specifically includes no new alcohol licenses to sell distilled spirits, packages to go or sales by the drink.
“There are some things in our current alcohol ordinance that could make some fairly substantial changes,” City Manager Hank Griffeth said.
He says they’re looking to amend a few rules, but they have a problem they’re focusing on.
“The density of distilled spirits, package to go stores,” Griffeth said.
He's talking about places that sell your bourbons, gins and vodkas, or hard liquor.
“We're beginning to get a lot of those stores close to one another. Oftentimes those types of businesses cause harm to the neighborhood,” he said.
Griffeth says they worry it could attract crime, loitering, litter or gambling activities. He says they may require these businesses to be a certain distance apart from now on.
“So, we're just trying to get ahead of that issue,” Griffeth said.
Fusion Liquor opened about a month ago on East Hancock.
They're only a half mile away from another liquor store.
“I have nothing to say about that, we have to follow the law,” owner Bibin Parekh said.
He says liquor stores are accessible in the area, but he does not think they have played a negative role in Milledgeville.
“I haven’t seen any crime or suspicious behavior,” Parekh said.
He says he has no problem with the way the city changes the rules, though.
“They always think about the community, so we always follow them,” Parekh said.
Rocky Patel owns AM City Package on Vinson Highway.
“It's half a mile. One here, one there and there," Patel said. "It's too close.”
He says the proximity might create crime in the neighborhood– a shooting happened outside his store just a week ago.
However, life-long Milledgeville resident Edwina Hubbard says blaming the stores doesn't make sense.
“You do a crime because you want to do one. The liquor store got nothing to do with that,” Hubbard said.
Griffeth says they're not trying to stop folks from getting alcohol licenses.
“We've just got some antiquated pieces in our alcohol ordinance. We're trying to have a controlled expansion. We’re trying to make sure the things we have in the ordinance are enforceable,” Griffeth explained.
Other things that Griffeth says they’re looking into include allowing brew pubs which the current ordinance does not allow to possibly creating an entertainment district that allows open containers for a certain amount of hours on a certain day.
They also want to review their current rule on sales by the drink; businesses currently have to have 50% of their revenue come from food if they want to sell by the drink. Griffeth says they may want to create businesses that don’t necessarily have to do that.
The 90-day pause does not apply to businesses that are renewing their alcohol licenses or who currently have one.