Kwanza Hall wants to mull 4 a.m. bar closing times, Satan laughs with glee
November 17, 2009 at 11:51 am by Thomas Wheatley in News
Just another night in Buckhead
City Councilman Kwanza Hall surprised his colleagues with a proposal yesterday to examine whether allowing Atlanta bars to close later would be a boon for the city’s nightlife and budget. From the AJC’s ubiquitous Eric Stirgus:
Hall introduced legislation Monday requesting the city study the revenue opportunities of expanding the hours to sell liquor from 2:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. City Council President Lisa Borders sent the legislation to the council’s Finance/Executive committee for further discussion. Hall wants a summary report by Jan. 30.
Hall said the sales tax money from extending the hours could fund public safety improvements. He said the city could enact the longer hours in areas of Atlanta where it’s more practical.
“I think we need to look at revenue,” said Hall, whose district includes portions of Castleberry Hill, Midtown and the Old Fourth Ward, where nightlife is more prevalent than other parts of the city. “Who knows how many millions of dollars we’ve lost?”
Some councilmembers weren’t pleased with Hall’s proposal. Councilman Howard Shook, who represents Buckhead neighborhoods that pushed for the earlier bar hours, said Hall’s idea would be “dead on arrival.” City Council President Lisa Borders called the idea “absolutely irresponsible.” Buckhead Coalition President Sam Massell said the additional revenue wasn’t worth the potential headache.
But Hall’s been tweeting about the proposal nonstop and wants residents’ opinions, which is why we’ve created this high-tech “blog.” Comments will be printed and hand-delivered to the appropriate council committee by bowtie-wearing monkeys holding balloons. The event will be filmed. And if council lets bars stay open later, we’ll release the monkeys back into the wild. It’s up to you, people.
UPDATE: Hall elaborates on his proposal in the comments below.
(Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
November 17th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Why is Buckhead so upset about this? They’ve already replaced all their bars with the Southeast’s most expensive hole in the ground. Buckhead doesn’t even have enough suburban tourist traffic to support an ESPNZone anymore.
Better alert the midtown NIMBY’s, however. God forbid these people who moved into a “residential district” on Peachtree Street find out that the Gidewon’s get two extra hours a night to ruin their quiet and pristine neighborhood.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I can tell you right now that this will be fought hard by the residents of Castleberry Hill. NOTHING good happens on the streets of our neighborhood between the hours of 2:30 and 4AM. And the increase in revenue will be negated by the cost of having more cops on the streets at this time to stop the fights, loitering, public urination, car break-ins, armed robberies, noise violations and drinking on the streets that already occurs in our neighborhood during regular bar hours.
Now we have to deal with this for 2 more hours every night? PLEASE Kwanza… think before you act or you will be voted out of office.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
:(
I was hoping for a pic of real bowtie-wearing monkeys, not a fake pic.
Save time email khall@AtlantaGa.gov
And unless you lived through the whole vision, velvet rope, etc… on and around Peachtree then you just don’t understand how bad it was.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
I would just like to have Sundays back. Reopening Bars (places that sell beer, mixed drinks and wine that do not serve food) would really help out the dieing convention business…
November 17th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
@ AH,
I know, I was too. I thought those photos would be easier to find. But I couldn’t bring myself to stray from my vision of dapper primates!
November 17th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
To the residents of Castleberry Hill.
We live in a City. I think it was retarded for you guys to cut your bar hours back to midnight. Durr. I’m sure the streets are a whole lot safer now that you take your neighborhood people off them 5 blocks from the jail.
The streets are safer with people on them.
When this BS went down the first time the venue owners offered to pay a fee to stay open later to fund the additional police force.
Our tourism revenues have steadily declined since the change and we are loosing convention traffic to areas that actually support night life.
The people who oppose this don’t go out anyway so why do you even care. You want peace and quiet – Don’t move in next to a BAR. Duh.
We need to find ways to generate revenue in this city outside the crippling hours of 7am and 7pm if we are going to enter the 21st century of Metropolitan economics.
Nobody wants to move to Atlanta cause it has quiet neighborhoods. Young people want a city that acts like a city.
Buckhead, Midtown, Castleberry Hill, East Atlanta and Little 5 were all preceded by the social establishments that got a foothold in the areas and brought people out.
Now that the coast is clear all the yuppies come in to micromanage this City into the ground.
Tourism yuppie. Look it up. Night Life…it’s a thing.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
@nadia: You are right. NOTHING good happens on the streets in the hours between 2:30-4 a.m. This is a bad idea, and should be DOA.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I supported the earlier closing hours, and now I realize it was a mistake. The experiment has failed: Atlanta’s reputation as an attractive tourism destination has suffered, conventions rate us even lower than before, revenues have dropped, and a link between closing hours and crime has been disproved by the crime problems since the change.
I strongly support Kwanza’s initiative to put things back as they were.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
god bless you joe!
November 17th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
To the zoo with bow ties now…
http://www.freakingnews.com/pictures/35000/Monkey-Bowtie–35092.jpg
As to everyone saying this hurts conventions I seriously doubt you have ever been sent to a convention by your job. You aren’t out drinking and parting till 4 am, if you are your probably not going to be sent to a convention on the company dime again. And if I’m sending my employees to a serious convention I’m not looking to see who has the best night life.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Everybody can’t be as serious as you AH.
You are obviously not in Sales which drives most businesses. Those guys rule the night.
The numbers are the ones saying our convention traffic has suffered. Who needs numbers anyway? I’m sure a bunch of off the cuff thinkers like yourself will turn this tourism thing around with stuffy meetings and staying at home watching netflix.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
AH,
Yes! That’s exactly what I had in mind. Gold star, my friend.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
The attempt to link convention business with earlier bar closing times is silly. Atlanta is still a top 5 convention destination and many of the cities we compete with have similar (or earlier) closing times: Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco, Washington DC, Houston, San Diego, etc.
What the argument seems to boil down to is those who would like to be in bars until 4am vs. those who would not.
Atlanta tourism certainly isn’t reliant on late night drinking – no one is confusing Atlanta with New Orleans or Las Vegas. Atlanta tourism is more about aquariums, cola, stone mountain and Tara.
Joe does have a point about how the earlier times were sold as a crime issue. Seems disingenuous now. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that longer club hours likely would add to the burden of our understaffed police force now. Will the increased revenue pay for that? If so, that’s a good argument.
And Turner. I get that you think Atlanta is supposed to be for the young but people do, in fact, move here for the quiet neighborhoods. Atlanta’s affordable intown neighborhoods may actually be the best thing it has going for it.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Mr. T it’s the only thing going for it cause I can’t think of another selling point.
Pre-2003 when you talked about Atlanta, outside of Atlanta, Buckhead would be the first thing mentioned. A focal point that WAS comparable to Bourbon Street for sure. I think people undervalue what Buckhead was to the outsider. Easy to get to, Centralized, entertainment along with the shopping district.
We no longer have a focal point of entertainment. That can not go overlooked when you consider Atlanta as a tourist destination. All the other attractions you listed are spread out and not easily accessible for the weekend traveler. Aquarium is great but it’s a single destination/does not a weekend make.
On top of that our traffic is choking out potential tourists that might come to the daytime attractions. The corridors are packed from sun up to sun down 5 days a week. Mass transit would alleviate this but nobody seems to want to deal with that issue either.
The neighborhoods have carved this city up into their own little districts suitable for living but hardly welcoming or easy to traverse for tourists.
I won’t even go into what the closing of Backstreets did to ghosttown…i mean midtown.
These are staples that took 30 years to build up and we whacked them in one fail swoop. Like it our not it was a devastating blow to Atlanta’s culture.
Now the creatures of the Night are all forced underground and if you don’t think that creates a bigger crime problem you are fooling yourself.
For me this issue is less about the crime and more about recognizing the contribution that night life gives to a city. Picket fences don’t inspire the youth.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Hey Turner…
Perhaps if you and your drunk friends would be courteous when you visit our neighborhood I would have no problem with extending bar hours.
But I am SICK AND TIRED of wading through broken liquor bottles, nightclub promotional cards discarded all over our streets, watching girls squat on the sidewalk to pee, listening to your music from your car that is so loud I cannot hear my TV, and so much more.
You can bash the residents who live in these neighborhoods all you want, but that is shortsighted, Without us there would be NO Midtown Castleberry Hill or any other intown neighborhood. We pay a hefty price to live intown and I for one do not want YOU telling me how to live in my own neighborhood.
How about we open a nightclub next door to your house… think you would like that?
November 17th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Wrong wrong wrong Nadia. Without the club there would be no YOU.
Buckhead residents built the club district to attract residents to that area long ago.
Backstreets was the single flag stick in a run down midtown that was a shadow of itself not 10 year ago.
I was going out in your neighborhood when those broken bottles were hypodermic needles and a girl wouldn’t dare pee outside cause she would probably get raped.
I know ‘your’ neighborhood better than you do. You are never going to stop people from making noise in a City. Noise is good, noise says, ‘hey, we’re alive and out and about, go commit crime somewhere else idiot.’
I would LOVE a nightclub next to my house. I don’t live in the suburbs because they are boring and lack culture. Sounds like your kind of place.
If you are gonna live in the City and want to pay less taxes you are going to have to share the city with everyone else and learn to embrace its culture so that others might enjoy it too. Even the smallest of villages had people, music and dancing.
November 17th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
What clubs were you going to Turner? I have lived there since 1996 and the only clubs that are there have opened within the last 5 years. Don’t try and play me…
I am SICK of people like you telling me how to live in my neighborhood.
I am SICK of the crap I have to put up with because of the patrons of these clubs who do not know how to behave in society.
I am SICK of having to defend my neighborhood against people like you. Castleberry Hill was on the fast track to become a gallery centered entertainment district, but your clubs came in and killed all that. Now all we are known for is loud bars, car break ins and trash.
You may want to live like that and I invite you to create that environnment in your own neighborhood. BUT DO NOT FOIST YOUR DESIRE FOR A NIGHTLIFE ON ME AND MY NEIGHBORHOOD!
November 17th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Doesn’t sound like you enjoy living in Castleberry Hill very much, Nadia.
November 17th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Castleberry Hill is also good for sandwiches at Elliott St Deli & Pub but I digress. Turner, we get it, you like nightlife. But don’t be a dick – no one wants a club and all of the attendant shenanigans next door to their house, not even hard-partying Turner.
I have lived in many intown neighborhoods (East ATL, Midtown, Grant Park, Capitol View, Poncey Highland/Old 4th Ward’ish). One thing they all have in common is no one wants folks pissing on their lawn or breaking into their car. Yes, it’s the price of doing business, I suppose. But can you blame Nadia for preferring that the madness stop at 2:30 instead of 4:00?
November 17th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Split the difference and make it 3am SEVEN nights a week. Closing at midnight on Sundays is just plain silly. True, bars are allowed to stay open later on Sundays when certain holidays fall on a Monday, but no one knows what the Hell those holidays are!
As a former bar employee, I loved my late night Sundays. Most folks enjoying an adult bevvie after midnight on a Sunday night/Monday morn were also bar employees enjoying a little elbow room without too many civilians about…
November 17th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
I love the Borders quote that this resolution to study the issue–simply STUDY the issue–is “irresponsible.” In my book, once you’ve panhandled for over $1M in developers’ money to support your mayoral campaign and, after all that effort, you’ve received a meager Nov 3 vote total of 14% of 30% of the total Atlanta electorate… “irresponsible” takes on a whole new meaning.
November 17th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
On the contrary Danimal… I love Castleberry Hill with all my heart. I have worked my ass off trying to make it a better place to live everyday. And I feel like I am kicked in the teeth when the city and people like Turner think they know what is best for me and my neighbors.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Look at the insanity of this issue now. Kwanza puts it out there for Reed to tee one off. Then Mary jumps all over it like a fool. Lisa goes against it just to spite Mary. Now Reed has to sit on his hands even though he would love to have the bars open to 4. He can’t support it now because Mary does, even though half of his supporters want it.
Is it to late to vote Clark Howard as a write in?
November 18th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I like nightlife as much as I like the daytime attractions. I also think we have a traffic problem. I think we lack representation from the General Assembly. I participated in the Budget Meetings over the summer and spoke in front of the City Council and Marta boards when we were given an opportunity to do so. I also participated in the Wrens Nest Non-Profit town hall meeting on the Arts in the Spring.
My viewpoint is City Wide Nadia, I’m not trying to put up walls around my piece of the city.
I support the Entertainers of Atlanta who have been shoved under the rug and the vast majority of patrons are not drunken idiots who pee on lawns as portrayed here. They are young professionals who have come to the city to meet other young professionals.
You don’t have to have a club in your back yard to support the need for entertainment in a City the size of Atlanta. If you don’t want it in your neighborhood then support a solution that would allow clubs to develop SOMEWHERE rather than just worrying about your own ass and branding everyone in the Entertainment industry as a drunken idiot.
You people are way too uptight and could use a night on the town. This city is full of talent.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Bring the clubs to Edgewood. We would love it. This has got to be the only city in the damn world where people complain about bars and clubs coming in. We have all chosen to live in this city and with that we give up the right to bitch about noise and garbage. That is just city living. If you want piece and quiet i hear there are a ton of forclosures in alpharetta.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Time and time again, the city shows that we may not be quite ready for primetime. The problem isn’t necessarily the bars or clubs. The issue is that we have an element in this city determined to commit crime and other violent acts upon those enjoying the extended last call. Better policing would really help. I really wish we had a central entertainment district.
November 18th, 2009 at 10:54 pm
For Nadia:
I may be wrong, but Castleberry Hill is already a city-recognized Historic District that has its own special guidelines governing everything from the distance between bars to the times that bars have to close. I’m not sure that any eventual change in last call would necessarily change things for your neighborhood.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Thank you all for your comments. First, I am only asking for a study. Second, I am not supporting nor working for anyone in the Atlanta Mayoral runoff or any other contested council races.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:35 am
My resolution asks that the study be completed by the end of January 2010, in time for us to consider the facts before we begin our annual budget talks. Economic forecasts suggest that those talks will be the toughest we have faced in a generation.
Some people claim that extending last call will significantly increase the amount of revenue the city receives from licenses and fees, thereby reducing the city’s dependence on property and sales taxes to fund its operations. I want to know if that is true.
Others claim that extending last call will increase crime, placing an even greater burden on our public safety resources. I want to know if that is true as well.
Finally, some Atlantans are nervous about a citywide extended last call, but are willing to consider legislation that would designate a few blocks or sections of the city as special entertainment districts, even on a pilot basis. This study can provide a cost-benefit analysis of any such proposal.
Over the coming months, a new mayor and city council will float lots of ideas aimed at cutting expenses and increasing revenues. I hope that each of them will be introduced in a timely fashion and supported with data that can lead to an informed civic discussion.
If you have specific thoughts or concerns about my request for a study of this issue, I want to hear from you.
November 19th, 2009 at 10:04 am
The number of things that have happened between 2003 when the closing time was moved to 2:30 and now are remarkable and pinpointing the 2:30am closing time as the reason for lost revenue is ignorant. It has taken this city years to identify a very clear gang issue in the city, you think that’s going to get better with a 4am closing time? You think the parking issues and crime will be less if there are more people or people are funneled out later? There are plenty of crimes that happen around midnight, when everyone is still out and the clubs that presented themselves as restaurants to get liquor and live entertainment licenses are still hopping! Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a 4am last-call will fix anything. This system is broken, anyone attending LRB or ZRB meetings will see that and it’s unfortunate that the people we have put faith in to help bring this city back in a responsible way would do this.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:50 am
Many of you have valid points….Nadia and Turner. I know where you both are coming from.
But I have to tell you, that the issue was wrongheaded from the start and NPU-M, which actually covers downtown, Old Fourth Ward, Castleberry, and a portion of the Marietta Street Corridor actually voted AGAINST the proposal.
The oppositon was largely framed by that fact that this was a Buckhead issue being rammed down the throats of other neighborhoods. At the time, Buckhead real estate interests would not consider doing something that might give oher neighborhoods advantages regarding high rents for nightclubs and restaurants. The NPU’s position was that the city should allow different neighborhoods to be able, through their own self determination, decide to to what they thought was best for themselves.
If Buckhead and Virginia Highland wanted to roll up the sidewalks at 2 am…fine..let them do it. But NPU-M thought that it was nonsense to put the same restrictions on Downtown. Mayor Franklin, Chief Pennington, and Mary Norwood thought it would be too dificult to manage and sold us a bogus crime correlaton….Pure BS!
What everyone fails to mention in the discussions about conventions, and tourists..is that the nightlife also attracted new residents..young residents..who come here to go to school (nearly 100,000 of them)and start their professional lives or small businesses and the like.
Without them, all of those 1 bedroom condos go empty…and we end up exactly where we sit now.
November 20th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
ATL guy, this is great context.Thank you.
Q: Which part of the city will have a 30% office vacancy rate next year, according to last week’s Atlanta Business Chronicle?
A: Buckhead.
By isolating Buckhead further and further, Shook and Buckhead business interests have condemned it to irrelevance. Note how many small businesses are going out of business along Peachtree north of I-85. The future of Atlanta is not Buckhead. And that’s a good thing.
November 25th, 2009 at 10:41 am
I am an adult, and I would like to stay out past 2:30 if I so choose. I would also like to have a drink last Sunday evening if I so choose. Closing down Backstreet because of all of the crime in Buckhead was the stupidest thing the city could have done. Thanks Mayor Shirley!!!