Too many liquor licenses in West Baltimore
I want to thank City Councilman Nick Mosby for his leadership in helping our community finally address the oversaturation of alcohol outlets with his new legislation introduced at Monday night’s City Council meeting.
I am a lifelong resident of Baltimore and currently live in the Sandtown-Winchester community. We hear about the research on how alcohol outlets affect our neighborhoods, hitting our poorest and minority communities the hardest, and I wanted to share what it’s like in parts of our community.
There are seven alcohol outlets within 12 blocks on Fulton Avenue. We struggle to bring new businesses, large development and homebuyers to the area, and these outlets don’t help. We have an extreme need for positive businesses that don’t suck the life out of our neighborhood.
People stand and hang outside some of these outlets from when they open until when they close, blocking the walkways, causing disturbances and treating our neighborhood like their own personal trash can throwing their trash anywhere and everywhere. These outlets are responsible for making sure people don’t loiter outside their establishments, but they rarely do anything about it. As a result, their patrons leave our neighbors and kids feeling scared and fearful.
These alcohol outlets do not create a positive environment in the SandtownWinchester community for young people or for area neighbors, and to boot, some of these alcohol outlets don’t even give back to the community that supports them.
We stand in solidarity with Councilman Mosby on his new bill, and we encourage other neighborhood associations to do the same. We’re happy to hear that others on the council — Robert Curran, Brandon Scott and Carl Stokes — signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation, and we hope other City Council members join them to stand with community in the interest of protecting our neighborhoods, our children and our city.
Inez Robb, Baltimore The writer is president of the SandtownWinchester Condominium Association and president of the Fulton Community Association.