North St. Paul tightens Sunday liquor ordinance

If a North St. Paul bar wants to sell liquor on Sundays, it will soon need to become a restaurant.

Bar owners in the northern suburb are struggling to understand the impact of a new ordinance passed late Tuesday night at a city council meeting. A few fear having to pay thousands of dollars to install kitchens or face closing on one of the busiest days of the week.

Under state law, only establishments that also sell food can sell liquor on Sundays.

North St. Paul leaders were looking to update the city's Sunday liquor law after realizing its old one was not being enforced.

Dozens of residents attended the council meeting, worried changes being considered would hurt the community's bars, one of which dates back more than a century. The council's action left some bar owners scratching their heads.

"Confusing is the first thing that popped into my head," Brad Jonas, owner of Roddy's Bar, said of the changes.

According to the new ordinance, a restaurant is an eating facility, other than a hotel, where customers order food from a printed menu. The food is prepared there and eaten there. Prepackaged food heated and served, such as frozen pizza, does not count as prepared food. Wait staff must be present, and restaurants must be licensed to sell food.

"The purpose behind having this definition is to have clarity so that we can administer it and have clarity so that businesses can do what they want to do - run their business," City Manager Wally Wysopal said.
Local bars would need to comply with this definition to continue selling liquor on Sundays. But they have a year to do so. The ordinance won't take effect until July 1, 2012.

The council did offer bar owners a bit of relief, dropping a controversial proposal that would require them to generate more than 50 percent of their revenue from food sales to sell booze on Sundays.

Earlier in the week, Matt Trost, bar and hall manager for the American Legion Post 39 on East Seventh Avenue, posted a letter on the group's website calling the original proposal "unrealistic, unattainable and utterly ridiculous." Another bar owner said 12 percent would be more reasonable.

After meeting with bar owners, local businesses and neighboring city officials, the city council dropped the 50 percent rule.

Council members said they would revisit the liquor law this summer. Other requirements left out of the new ordinance - a seat count, parking areas, patio access and penalties for violations - still need to be worked on.

"We're trying to make it workable," Mayor Mike Kuehn said. The new ordinance is "a huge step forward."

The council passed a resolution to meet with bar owners and other representatives to work out the details by Sept. 1.

"I wish (the city) would've taken more time to come up with (the ordinance) instead of passing it and going back and fixing it," said Mike Brown, owner of Neumann's Bar and Grill on East Seventh Avenue, established in 1887.

But council members acted Tuesday because local bars needed their liquor licenses renewed by July 1. If an ordinance hadn't been passed at Tuesday's meeting, the city would have had to enforce the current ordinance for Sunday liquor sales, which bar owners say would be nearly impossible to abide by.

Current city law requires establishments selling liquor on Sundays to have separate seating for at least 100 people while employing at least two full-time cooks and 15 full-time employees and offering a variety of eating utensils, including china.

Brown, who says he believes his Neumann's Bar fits the requirements of the new ordinance, said he fears for those that don't. Installing a kitchen is not cheap, nor easy.

"I feel bad for some of the bars who have to put in special equipment," he said. "(The city) is not thinking about that."

Jonas said, "We have one year to adjust, but it's a long process."