Council taps into liquor licenses
Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Roslindale, Eastie, Hyde Park could see more
A bill that would phase in 250 new liquor licenses into specific Boston ZIP codes over five years appears to be on track for a vote soon.
The proposal, introduced by City Councilors Brian Worrell and Ruthzee Louijeune, is meant to respond to the fact that the boom of bars and restaurants in neighborhoods near downtown and, particularly, the Seaport, have resulted in the typical transferrable licenses getting hoovered up into those areas, leaving little in the farther-flung parts of town.
“This method will help ensure neighborhoods have the opportunity to grow at their own pace, and avoid neighborhood battles over distribution,” Worrell said during a working session on Thursday in which councilors hammered out some details of the language but didn’t make broad changes. “As neighborhoods develop it will attract outside visitors and investments, building Boston’s reputation as a diverse, exciting destination.”
Boston’s 1,400-plus current liquor licenses can be sold from owner to owner, generally going for $500,000 to $700,000, the councilors said. This means the big-money new spots going in in places like the Seaport that are willing to pay that kind of cash end up pricing neighborhood restaurants out.
The law, which would need state approval, would apply to ZIP codes 02119, 02121, 02122, 02124, 02125, 02126, 02128, 02131, 02132, and 02136 — areas including Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Roslindale, East Boston and Hyde Park. It would make five new-non-transferrable licenses available a year for five years for each ZIP code. Three of those would be all-alcohol and two for sales of wine and liquor.
For example, 02128, which is the entirety of East Boston, would have five available the first year after passage, five more on top of that the second year, and so on, up to five years. None of these would be able to be sold; if a spot doesn’t work out or a business goes under, it just reverts back to the city to be reintroduced for that ZIP code.
Worrell’s initial proposal provides some numbers — Mattapan only has 10 out of the 1,432 liquor licenses, it asserts, and, “Roxbury, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Dorchester have less than 10% of Boston’s on-premise licenses and less than 4% of total capacity, despite having nearly 40% of the city’s population.”
“We work to revitalize downtown, but we are also working to revitalize Mattapan and Hyde Park and Dorchester and Roxbury and neighborhoods that for too long have gone without these sorts of investments,” Louijeune said.
The bill appears to be headed toward a vote in the coming weeks.
There wasn’t any opposition during the working session to this as a concept. Rather, councilors went back and forth about how best to finesse the wording to persuade the Legislature, which is often loathe to approve anything sent up to it by cities and towns, to pass the bill.
Government Operations Chair Ricardo Arroyo, who led the working session, and City Councilor Michael Flaherty were among those sorting through the details of the language.
Flaherty, a former government ops chair and the longest-serving councilor, cautioned that anything too open-ended or ambitious-sounding could scare off the denizens of the State House. He said this is the kind of “modest proposal” that it needs to be, and that if the city tries to bite off much more it will scare off the legislators and then “it never goes anywhere.”