Urban Residents Association Endorses Gilmore's Beer-Blight Bill

Wage tweets his displeasure at the URA's endorsement. I don't live in the central core, so I can't address why the bill would be "pointless and harmful" from a Downtown (proper) perspective, but from a Salemtown perspective (we fall inside the "Downtown loop"), the bill represents one more attempt to control blight and crime that rises and falls with single serve beer sales at the corner of 7th Avenue North and Garfield Street. The two occasions that the beer vendor was closed for long periods of time--once after the manager was shot during a robbery attempt and once after the market was cited for allowing consumption on premises--suspicious behavior around the market disappeared.  There is no stronger case against single-serve than that. Given that the police have been working to prevent crime at the market for as long as I've been here, and we are not getting any good alternatives from anyone else, banning seems to be the best option available to high density residential areas.  These are reasons why the Salemtown association voted unanimously to support Gilmore's ban, which comes before Metro Council tonight.