Liquor is Slower
If this thread about making neighborhood input on development mandatory was the most fitting place for Todd Leopold to post the news about his departure, this story in the News about the fate of a scarce liquor license may be the perfect bookend. The city has voted for it to go to a public golf course over any of the 9 local businesses that applied for it. But at least one of the businesses has some council support. That would be Everyday Cook in Kerrytown, which teaches cooking classes, serves fancy lunches and offers its “amazing loft space for full-service dinners and private parties.”
The competition over the license is so fierce because “its price tag was $2,000 because it is a new license. The council had been told that businesses buy such licenses on the private market for six figures.” Why is this legal? You’re not allowed to sell your Ohio State tickets for over face value, but these government-granted resources can be sold by private businesses for 100 times their initial cost. Is there any public benefit in permitting these sales?
So the day after the news breaks that Leopold Brothers is leaving town, we learn that its replacement (well, not strictly, because Leopold’s has a manufacturing license, not a liquor license) will most likely be a concession at a golf course whose sales will help offset the taxpayer subsidy, a subsidy demanded by a vocal group of neighborhood residents, that is currently propping up this niche recreational facility.
But at least there’s an outside possibility that it will be a boutique kitchen store.
Todd, we’ll miss you.
This vote is so typical of our local pols and the city administration specifically. Bait and switch, shell game, believe a consultant instead of the people, tell them one thing, do another hypocrisy. The fish rots from the head down, folks!
All of this smacks of the financial sleight of hand shell game of Roger “slush fund” Fraser.
Ron Suarez is right. Give them back the fees! Kudos to MIke Anglin! Sabra makes the politically smart move! Shame on the rest of you!
How many full time, benefit paying jobs will be produced by the city? Parks and Rec hires temporary, seasonal, low paying, no benefit workers. At least Everyday Cook has the chance to grow, pay taxes and produce more jobs than the golf courses ever will!
The golf course lost money for years even after we were told they they were solvent. Jayne Miller ran the courses (and she’s “managing” the old YMCA/homeless fiasco as well) yet she’s still employed???
Why not just open a city owned bar (Maybe they could put on at Leopold’s)? There’s more $$ in that than there is serving a couple of beers to some golfers 6 months out of the year.
Golf in the city is doomed. It’s poorly managed (Jayne Miller) Private courses do it better. A liquor license will not help help this. I’m waiting for the chance to say I told you so when it fails!
Sell the golf courses!
SHAMELESS!!
posted by tankertruck on February 5th, 2008 at 1:50 pmYeah, I can’t believe I actually sort of agree with Mike and Sabra. Just remember that if this golf concession is successful and anyone argues in the future that the golf courses don’t cost taxpayer money, that’s because they’ve already cost the city a liquor license.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 5th, 2008 at 2:02 pmMichigan’s liquor laws are pretty deeply fucked on a state level, and MADD flips out every time there’s talk of reform.
posted by js on February 5th, 2008 at 2:20 pmRon Suarez put up a long post on his site with his thoughts on this fiasco:
http://ronsuarez.com/2008/02/05/city-of-ann-arbor-awards-liquor-license-to-itself/
Quoting (this is just a little bit of it):
posted by Laura on February 5th, 2008 at 2:23 pmEveryday Cook offers a unique space that is an example of how business and communities can change to produce benefits that ripple throughout our local economy. Unique spaces like Everyday Cook attract the creative class, which we want to promote in Ann Arbor. Michigan’s best hope for an economic recovery is to nurture the creative class and Ann Arbor could be the nexus of a creative revolution in Michigan that makes people want to consider living here and locating their business here versus the east or west coast. Or maybe we can attract people to move to Ann Arbor because they want to drink beer at a golf course. How unique is that?
This libertarian blogger I sometimes read has a pretty good post on MADD: “Over in the Hit & Run comments, someone noted with amusement that the president of MADD is a man, so he’s obviously not a mother. The group isn’t just opposed to ‘drunks,’ they’re opposed to drinking. And the ‘driving’ has long become irrelevant, too. Which leaves ‘Against.’”
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 5th, 2008 at 2:25 pmThree of our council reps have not yet drunk Roger Fraser’s Kool Aid.
Ron Suarez’s post nails the entire situation at City Hall. Bureaucracies only exist to perpetuate themselves.
posted by mucho gusto on February 5th, 2008 at 3:03 pmUnless EveryDay cook is going to be open later than 7:00 a liquor license would be ridiculously wasted on them. At least the clubhouse at the golf course could stay open past dark.
Now when that Dragon Fly store across from Zingerman’s goes out of business and someone volunteers to open a proper bar (open until at least midnight) in that spot, I’ll be completely in favor of keeping that license in Kerrytown, but not until.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on February 5th, 2008 at 5:12 pmRon flat out gets it.
posted by Tom Brandt on February 5th, 2008 at 9:51 pmThe golf course club house is also empty several months out of the year. Now it can be rented for events. They’ll sell ten times as much booze there as EC would have.
posted by Steve on February 6th, 2008 at 9:41 amIf the NIMBYs and politicians in Ann Arbor could harness all the energy they’ve put into building AA’s arsenal of creative class repellents, we might have a solution to global warming by now.
posted by Anna on February 6th, 2008 at 11:04 amSuarez is an ass hat who absolutely does NOT get it.
posted by imjustsayin on February 6th, 2008 at 11:44 amAttracting the creative class is for suckers in Saginaw. Ann Arbor, apparently, has more refined taste. Our objective is to attract the created class: people who have all of their frisky, creative, oat sowing behind them and are now just loaded.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on February 6th, 2008 at 12:04 pmThe Council made the only rational decision they could on the liquor license. They represent the taxpayers.
Everybody who looked at the golf issue said the golf course needs to sell beer and wine if it is going to remain viable and Leslie supports Huron Hills. (Otherwise many, many golfers will just not play there.) The good citizens of the Parks Admin. Comm. voted a few weeks ago to retain the license.
What did you expect council to do? Give away something worth $100K and then have to go buy one for the golf course?
Meanwhile Everyday Cook can just go out and get one the old fashioned way, like every other place has done for the last decade, buy it! Banks will give just about any viable place a loan because the license itself is the collateral. Council even opened up a path for them to get one for $20 K.
I am bothered by the fact that if EC got it, they could just turn around and sell it for $100K, like winning the lotto. In this situation it would have been a gift from the city at our expense.
posted by Dustin on February 6th, 2008 at 4:35 pmWhat Suarez was particularly objecting to was the PROCESS of awarding the license, and in this I think he’s absolutely correct. If a majority of the Council believed the license should be given to the golf course, then they should have voted to give it to the golf course in the beginning. Opening up the process and expecting extensive work from the applying businesses made it seem as if it there actually might have been a chance for a business to receive the license.
If the Council committed to having an open application process (which they did), then it needed to actually BE open, with the same standards applied to the golf course as to the applying businesses. The Sub-Committee in charge of determining where the license went in the ‘open process’ voted to give it to everyday cook, which Council then ignored. Overall, a pretty lousy process for all involved.
posted by Lisa on February 6th, 2008 at 5:13 pmBut the license process started long before the Parks Admin. Comm. voted to keep it for the golf course. Besides, the application fee was $100. So, how was Everyday Cook damaged?
And, from what I heard, the “process” was tilted by Suarez the whole way, he wanted Everyday Cook and that was it.
So, who do you listen to? A three member sub-committee of council who votes 2-1 to give it to EC when the city scored one point under the EC or the people on PAC who want you to save $100 K of taxpayer money.
Council did the responsible thing.
posted by Dustin on February 6th, 2008 at 5:44 pmWhy should the golf course be subsidized by the taxpayers at all? Shouldn’t we be having a debate on that instead of just assuming that we need to subsidize golf?
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 6th, 2008 at 5:49 pm“Why should the golf course be subsidized by the taxpayers at all?”
Every time someone asks that question I have the same response, why should any park activity be subsidized? To name a few, do the pools, skating rinks, tennis courts, or dog park pay their own way? Of course not. So why do we subsidize those special interests?
So as I’ve said before, I don’t golf, I don’t ever plan to golf, but unless someone shows me actual figures showing that the golf courses hemorrhage money way out of proportion with the rest of the parks system, I don’t see any reason to pick on them. Unless you want to privatize all of the parks.
posted by Parking Structure Dude! on February 6th, 2008 at 6:05 pmI don’t see why, if licenses are going for $100K on the open market, they are being sold to anyone for $2K at all. It’s tantamount to giving away $98K worth of taxpayer money to whatever business wins. And another $98K to the golf course seems like a lot of money on top of what is a huge investment just to keep a golf course play-worthy. I can agree with PSD’s point that taxpayers subsidize all sorts of things that each individual taxpayer doesn’t want, but there has to be some sort of endpoint to that argument — some limit in the per-person investment the taxpayers are willing to make in any one group of recreational constituents. To stop short of giving the golf course a $100K liquor license for pennies on the dollar seems like as good a place to draw a line in the sand as any.
posted by Anna on February 6th, 2008 at 7:22 pmYeah, I wish I had these numbers…all I can find is that the golf courses lost about $200,000 last year. That’s not including the fact that the city could make money selling them. One argument I’ve heard is that is would cost about the same to maintain them as parks, so we might as well keep them as golf courses, but at least as parks they would be accessible to a wider range of people. Golf is a sport whose participants traditionally are fairly affluent, and it can be played only in warm-ish weather; these factors should be taken into account when deciding whether it is a disproportionate subsidy.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 6th, 2008 at 7:50 pmI will also admit that I have a special hatred for golf. Some of it isn’t quite rational — after all, it’s hardly Leslie Park’s fault that one of the sport’s biggest tournaments is held at a club that prohibits women and only recently switched from whites-only.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 6th, 2008 at 7:53 pm“There may come a day when women will be invited to join our membership, but that timetable will be ours and not at the point of a bayonet.”
posted by Hootie on February 6th, 2008 at 11:01 pmYou can cross-country ski on the golf course in the winter.
posted by Carolyn on February 7th, 2008 at 11:07 amAnd now you can have a brew after skiing. But is skiing elitist?
posted by Steve on February 7th, 2008 at 11:29 amActually, skiing is my second least-favorite sport! From a cultural perspective — I’ve never participated in either. I think I was one of the only people in my college class who had never skiied.
If we could just have a local government that allocates funds based on my personal prejudices, I think we’d all be better off. I could be fair — I’m not really a fan of little kids, but I would still spend a lot of the recreation budget on activities for them.
posted by ann arbor is overrated on February 7th, 2008 at 11:43 amLike skating instruction, river camps, sports camps, swimming? Much of the budget is spent on those things. The kids that do want to learn to golf generally start at the public courses.
Cross country skiing is very different as well compared to downhill. Its a fairly green/outdoor sport. Good for your mind and body.
posted by Steve on February 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pmI don’t golf but received some clubs a few years ago. Now that I can have a beer I might go try.
posted by Steve on February 7th, 2008 at 12:29 pmThe proposition that the liquor license will financially prop up the course sufficiently, is based on one of the following: bad data/disregard for data/no data. Did they not pay attention to the fact that golf dollars are going away and not coming back anytime soon? Golf is on a well-publicized decline. Another fine example of the city being completely out of touch with hard economic data.
posted by cookie on February 23rd, 2008 at 12:55 pm