Minutes - Council Work Session - 11/03/2003

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would not change the current City ordinance at this time. Bar owners from three establislwnents, including Diamonds Sports Bar, Spectators Bar and Grille, and JR's Outpost requested a meeting with the City Council to discuss the matter further. Gary Gruber, Diamonds Sports Bar, stated that when the issue first came about it was something he thought about, but personally did not care to be open until 2:00 a.m. Over the last couple of months he has learned that the city of Blaine is making the change to allow their bars to stay open until 2:00 a.m. and the city of Coon Rapids is considering the change this week so that it would be in place by the holidays. The cities of Mounds View, Spring Lake Park, Fridley, Rogers, and Albcrtville have already made the change. He also contacted staff from Anoka and they indicated if Coon Rapids makes the change they will consider doing the same. In his case he is personally watching 20 to 40 percent of his clientele leave between 11:00 and 11:30 to head to other bars that stay open later. It has really impacted his business already and as more surrounding communities make the change it will impact them greater. His establishment and Spectators take on a lot more responsibility to try and prevent people from driving home if they have too much to drink. He has a limo that they use to bring people home and Spectators will bring in cabs to drive people home. Now they are going to have people that leave their bars and drivc to other communities and then will have to drive back to the City of Ramsey. That activity alonc will ah'eady place more of a burden on the Police Department. Bob Carter, Spectators Bar and Grille, stated that they personally would have prefen'ed if the legislature would have left the bar closing time at 1:00 a.m. except for the downtown area. He currently owns five bars and at two of the locations they are allowed to stay open until 2:00 a.m. They curreutly only keep those bars open until 2:00 a.m. on weekends or when they are busy. At their Ramsey location a majority of their patrons live in Ramsey and now they are seeing a lot of them leave at 11:30 to head to other bars that are open later and then they will have to drive back to Ramsey at 2:00 a.m. They take policing their guests very seriously and if they have people that were served at Spectators and then leave and continue to drink somewhere and then there is an accident they would be held responsible. In addition, if people leave their establishment at 11:30 every weekend eventually they are going to just start going to a bar that stays open until 2:00 a.m. and no longer come back to their location. The Town Center is going to be a great project, but there will be some big businesses that will come in and be looking for the 2:00 a.m. bar closing and if that is not an option for them they may choose not to locate in the City. Police Chief Way agreed that the bar owners are trying to run a business and they have to be concerned if they see their business going somewhere else. He did check with the communities that are immediately adjacent to the City of Ramsey and all of them are still with the 1:00 a.m. bar closing time. He explained that the average drunk they currently pull over is at. 16 or. 17 and if they give people an additional hour to drink those numbers will probably go up. He felt that they should wait on making the change until the surrounding cities make the change. The city of Elk River is currently watching what the City of Ramsey is doing. His other concern is staffing officers because typically after 3:00 a.m. they only have one officer on duty. City Council Work Session/November 3, 2003 Page 6 of 13