Council looks to loosen liquor store regulations in downtown core only

Pressure from the liquor store industry and concern from fragile communities had city council backing away from a city recommendation to do away with Edmonton’s tight liquor store regulations Tuesday.

Instead of eliminating the 500-metre separation distance everywhere, council’s urban planning committee voted to look at only reducing separation distances in the downtown.

Councillors also asked officials to return with an analysis of how to increase design requirements for the stores, increase separation distance for other sensitive areas like homeless shelters and addiction treatment facilities, and deal with social disorder issues.

Liquor store owners told the committee small clusters of stores create a race to the bottom with discount outlets promoting problem drinking.

“The issue here is not how many stores are available in Edmonton but how close they are ... They attract populations at risk,” said Ivonne Martinez, president of the Alberta Liquor Store Association.

Others said the issue was “janky,” or poor quality stores, with few staff and coverings on the windows.

A location like an area with four stores in five blocks on Stony Plain Road sees high numbers of aggressive panhandlers, said Irene Blain of the West Jasper Sherwood Community League.

They start fights when they’re drunk and drive residents away from the area.

RULE AIMED AT MINIMIZING HARM

Edmonton’s 500-metre separation rule has been in place since 2007, when council was concerned about the crime, disorder and health impacts they believed was associated with clusters of liquor stores in certain struggling areas of the city.

Last December, council asked city staff to take another look at this issue after turning down a request from the Katz Group to allow an extra liquor store in Ice District. There’s already a liquor store just across 103 Avenue but in a back alley.

City administration advised council to do away with the separation distance entirely because they looked neighbourhood by neighbourhood and could find no correlation between crime data and the distribution of liquor stores across the city.

CRIME TIED TO LIQUOR HOT SPOTS

But their literature review did find peer-reviewed studies demonstrating strong correlations between liquor store concentration and violence and underage drinking.

It’s just that correlations only seem to appear when the concentration is very high, several times higher than what Edmonton sees when stores are averaged across a neighbourhood.

But Edmonton might be seeing those concentrations in localized situations, like the issue on a couple blocks of Stony Plain Road, said Ward 1 Coun. Andrew Knack.

Edmonton has these clusters grandfathered in from before it created the 2007 rule.

Knack said he wants those existing clusters addressed in whatever council eventually does on this issue.

“If we can’t, I don’t see the point (in the regulations),” he said.

The city planners will talk with the city compliance team and provincial officials with the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission to see what can be done before reporting back to the committee next March.