Amelia Finefrock
The City Council’s License Committee proposed an ordinance for liquor stores to refrain from selling one last drink after midnight is being considered and folks have mixed feelings. Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd) said the measure was designed to reduce public drunkenness.
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The measure that would ban the sale of wine and/or liquor containers with less than 25 fluid ounces and beer containers with less than 41 ounces won the unanimous approval of the City Council Committee on License and Consumer Protection after several Lakeview residents said they feared to leave their apartments late at night.
“After midnight, the people who want to get drunk and the criminals who want to rob them all show up together,” says Ellen Hughes, who lives near the Belmont CTA station.
Under the plan, stores would be allowed to resume selling single servings of booze at 7 a.m. as well as prevent packaged-goods liquor license stores from giving away the tiny bottles of booze.
Loretta Quijaas, an East Lakeview resident, said she has to “kick cans and bottles out of her way”
while she walks her 13-year-old daughter.
“Once the sun goes down, you have to be trapped in your house for a certain period of time,” said Quijas “You don’t know what you’re gonna see … when you come out on the street the next day.”
Michele Smith, Lincoln Park Ald (43rd) said the practice has been “somewhat of a problem” in her “youthful ward” in regards to its overwhelming amount of DePaul University students and young professionals.
“We expect our neighborhood package-goods people to very carefully card people,” she said “But package-goods sellers don’t have a duty the way establishments have to make sure people aren’t being overserved.”
Smith called it “a matter of public safety that people not be overserved.” Smith says the new ordinance was designed to curtail people from being denied service at a bar or restaurant “so you just go down the street to somewhere else and grab a single serving.”
