It’s a simple fact that, most of the time, people don’t like change. Take, for example, the law than forbids the sale of alcohol anywhere east of White Rock Creek in Lake Highlands. Despite changes in the wet/dry status in other parts of the city, the ban in our area has remained intact since the days of Prohibition. We just don’t seem to mind.
After all, if you want to stock the fridge or liquor cabinet, all you have to do is drive a little ways to the string of package stores that line the wet/dry boundaries.
And if you want to have a glass of wine or another libation with dinner, that’s easy enough too. Most of the restaurants within the Lake Highlands dry area operate as a private club, which means they can serve alcoholic beverages by having their guests fill out a bit of paperwork, doing a little extra legwork and paying a little extra money.
Many of them say it’s no big deal.
“It’s just another level of steps,” says Ray Washburne of The M Crowd Restaurant Group, which operates 23 restaurants in the Dallas/ Fort Worth area, including Mi Cocina at Kingsley Square.
But do those extra steps have any bearing on what comes in or, more importantly, what stays out of Lake Highlands as far as commercial development is concerned?
“We’re struggling in Lake Highlands for a better mix of restaurants and retail,” says Michael Miles, a neighborhood resident and chairman of the Dallas Northeast Chamber of Commerce. “One has to wonder if there is a correlation there.
The Law
Currently, neighborhood restaurants east of White Rock Creek and south of LBJ wishing to serve alcohol must obtain a private club permit from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC).
A permit can be designated as either wine and beer only, or as mixed beverage. A mixed beverage permit costs significantly more — about $3,000 instead of nearly $300 for wine and beer. Mixed beverage permit holders also have to pay different taxes.
“Theoretically, a private club is a group of people — say Elks Lodge — that go hang out somewhere and bring their own beverages and leave it there. Maybe they hire someone to serve them while they are there,” explains Carolyn Beck of TABC. “You are paying for the service. To be a member, the club will charge, say, $3 or something like that. Or they will require someone to be a guest of a member.”
In order to keep track of its members, most private clubs use a driver’s license, the Unicard or have their own cards printed. (Beck says a common misconception is that a Unicard gives the holder access to any private club in Texas . Basically, she says, Unicard is a private company established to help private clubs keep track of membership. “It only confirms whatever club you are a member of.”)
Currently, in order to change the law, a local option election must be held. Each city, county or judicial precinct in Texas can have an election and decide whether the sale of alcohol will be legal and, if so, what kinds of alcohol. The law, Beck says, makes things pretty complicated. So complicated, in fact, the only map that shows the specific wet/dry areas in Dallas hasn’t been updated since 1986.
An area wishing to hold a local option election must apply (TO WHO OR WHAT???) for a petition. Once approved, petitioners must collect signatures from 35 percent of the registered voters in their political subdivision — whether it’s a city, county or judicial precinct. The signatures have to be gathered within 60 days, which makes it a pretty ambitious undertaking for larger areas such as Dallas. (For information concerning local option elections, visit sos.state.tx.us/elections/laws/liquorelections.shtml.)
Although this system hasn’t changed in years, that’s not to say no one has tried. In fact, just recently a bill passed in Austin that would have provided the voters in Texas’ metropolitan areas with the opportunity to vote on allowing mixed beverage sales in restaurants without needing to join a private club. The bill called for immediate local option elections in several counties, including Dallas, without requiring petitions.
Gov. Rick Perry, however, vetoed it — basically saying that the status quo gave communities a measure of local control that should not be taken away.
The Community
Although Washburne says he has no problem complying with the law the way it is now, and operating the Mi Cocina at Kingsley Square as a private club doesn’t hurt his business, he says he wouldn’t mind seeing the law change.
“With the Unicard, it’s really a moot point,” he says. “It’s just a hassle … and an extra cost for us and extra cost for the customer.”
Hans Van Loenen agrees that being in a dry area creates additional costs and work. Van Loenen and his wife Clare have owned and operated ST Café in Lake Highlands for the past 15 years.
“Because it is dry, there are extra costs. You have to have a special license. You can’t have your liquor delivered — you have to go pick it up. You have to have a special license for your car even to pick up the liquor,” he says. (According to Beck, it’s not legal for a wholesaler to deliver alcohol to a dry area. And to transport alcohol to a restaurant in a dry area, you must have a local card permit registering the cars that will be transporting the liquor. The permit costs $86 a year, and as many cars as the permit holder wants can be registered under the permit.)
For Van Loenen, all of the work is worth it, not because he makes a profit on the alcohol that he serves, but because his customers often like to enjoy a glass of wine with their meal.
He says he doesn’t think changing the law would make things any better.
“I don’t know how much it would change. If it’s not dry, then it would attract more chain restaurants, and I don’t know if we want that in the neighborhood. If chains come in, it will destroy the neighborhood restaurants.”
Former councilperson Donna Halstead also says that making Lake Highlands a wet area could potentially bring more harm than good into the community.
“If it were to go wet, we’d see more bars and clubs,” she says. “That’s something the neighborhood would not be comfortable with. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with it.”
But some say they expect changing the law would benefit Lake Highlands.
“I think it’s the main reason why there’s not a whole lot of restaurants in Lake Highlands,” says Highlands Café co-owner Tommy Steele of the ban on alcohol sales. He says that if the area became wet, which Steele favors, the neighborhood would have a better mix of restaurants.
The Developers
Councilman Bill Blaydes has been a big player in attempts to beef up the commercial development in Lake Highlands. He says that being a dry area does have some drawbacks when it comes to bringing investors in.
“Certainly, all the developers that I have talked to about the Town Center have the opinion that it would improve their capability to bring in a variety of tenants to the center.”
But, he says, echoing Halstead’s sentiment, “I don’t think the community would accept it. I think we’d have an opposition as big as when that strip club opened on Plano Road. It’s not worth the fight, especially when we have Unicard capabilities.”
Susan Steelhammer, vice president of property management for the West Village, a town center-type property in the uptown area of Dallas similar to what Blaydes and company have in mind for Lake Highlands, says developing in any area rea
lly depends on the support of the community.
“It’s just extra steps,” she says of the private club system. “I don’t know if it [staying dry] would prevent development. It just depends. If you have the support of the community — do it. But if you don’t have the support, I’d guess we’d go to the other side of town.”
Steelhammer says she’s not aware that her company, which is owned by Henry S. Miller, has ever developed in a dry area.
Washburne, who also is president and CEO of Charter Holdings, the company that is redeveloping Kingsley Square, doesn’t think the law as it is keeps potential businesses from setting up shop in the area either. In fact, he’s says he’s bringing in a variety of tenants to the strip center, including a locally owned Italian restaurant, a burger joint and nationally operated L.A. Fitness.
When it comes to opening in a certain location, Washburne says, “I don’t think [the law] makes a difference.”
Neither does Chris Barnes, a representative of Brinker International, the company responsible for chains such as Chili’s, Corner Bakery, On The Border, Maggiano’s, Macaroni Grill and Rockfish Grill.
“We operate in wet areas and in dry areas. Our number one priority is to comply with all the local laws involving liquor. We’re pretty used to it,” he says, pointing to the 20-year-old Chili’s in Casa Linda Plaza that operates as a private club.
“If we are operating in a dry area, then we require a private club, and use the Unicard system. It’s not really impacted our decision to open in any community. It does impact business as far as registering people for membership — it takes a little more.
“The general consensus is that we are flexible. It really all depends on the location. The overriding criteria are whether they are convenient to nearby residential and commercial development and whether they have good street visibility. There are other factors, too. It’s never one issue that governs a decision.”
