Public Safety
Police chief recommends Iowa City’s Summit bar lose license
Posted on Nov 12, 2009 by Gregg Hennigan.
The Summit bar in downtown Iowa City.
Another downtown Iowa City bar is in trouble with the city for having too many underage patrons cited by police for possession of alcohol.
Police Chief Sam Hargadine is recommending the City Council deny the liquor license renewal of the Summit Restaurant & Bar, 10 S. Clinton St.
Under a council policy approved earlier this year, Hargadine is required to recommend the denial of a liquor license for any establishment with a rate of underage patrons ticketed for possessing alcohol greater than 1.0 per officer visit. The citation is commonly called a PAULA, for possession of alcohol under the legal age.
For the past year, the Summit had a PAULA rate greater than 1.9, the highest in the city.
The council is scheduled to vote on the recommendation at its meeting Tuesday. A denial of a liquor license can be appealed to the state, during which time an establishment can remain open.
Summit owner Mike Porter, who owns three other downtown businesses, said the council’s policy was “illegal” and “unconstitutional.”
“If they choose not to renew my license, they are inflicting monetary damages onto us and we will seek to recover them,” he said.
He declined to say whether he would challenge a denial beyond an appeal to the state and also said he could not comment at this time on what about the city’s policy he considers illegal.
The council has beefed up its efforts this year to combat perceived underage and binge drinking problems in this college town, with tougher liquor license regulations being part of that.
In July, the council voted to deny liquor licenses to two other downtown bars with high PAULA rates: Fieldhouse, 111 E. College St., and Etc., 118 S. Dubuque St.
Owners of those bars have appealed to the state’s Alcoholic Beverages Division and are waiting for rulings by an administrative law judge. Those rulings could answer the broader question of whether or not the city’s policy is allowable.
In a September PAULA report from the Police Department, seven establishments out of 110 had rates above 1.0.
There sometimes is confusion over the difference between a selling to an underage person violation and a PAULA ticket. In the former, the establishment is cited.
With a PAULA, the individual is cited and it typically means the person was seen by an officer with an alcoholic drink rather than the establishment being caught selling a drink to a minor. PAULAs are much more common.
Why I just had a nice beer there last Friday, and I'll be jiggered if the waitress didn't card me. Of course it was at lunch, and I look like I'm 75. But still…. I'll miss it.
Dang. Now I'll have to hang out in the can return at Hy-Vee to experience that level of stale beer odor and floor stickiness.
Their food is decent at least. You are totally right on that nasty-floor and smell.
It might be. I've only eaten there once and was too distracted by the rank stench of the previous night's spillage to focus on the food. Makes one question how attentive they are to cleanliness in other areas of their business.
Summit looks like a pretty nice place, not just a run-down hangout for hard-core drunks. Are they really being a problem that needs to be shut down?
Are they selling to teenagers? Are they looking the other way when 21-year-olds are buying for them?
A non-compliance rate of "1.9" means every time police walk in the door, they ticket 2 underage people for drinking, but… Are police performing compliance checks fairly and equally at all bars in the city? They can find more violations on Friday nights than Tuesday mornings.
Also, bars that college students favor tend to have more underage people trying to drink in them than a place that serves mostly senior citizens. It doesn't mean the bar owner is being more reckless – he/she just has a different clientele coming to them.
I just hope if they're going to force a business to shut down, the business really deserves it.
I just posted a blog item that includes a link to a recent PAULA report showing how many police visits and citations each bar has. http://is.gd/4TKtv
A more direct link to the report cited by Mr. Hennigan is http://www.iowa-city.org/weblink/docview.aspx?id=...
Most bars in Iowa City manage to keep under the one citation per police visit limit used as the criterion for this evaluation.
Summit definitely is known as a place that under age students can get served; I was never under age while living in IC, but I have plenty of friends who are and Summit was always on their list. The problem with the new ordinance is that it doesn't adjust for the size of the bar, which would seem to me to be a major flaw in the law, if one were inclined to fight about it (as I am sure the disciplined owners will be). In a place with a capacity of 700+ it's going to be much easier to find someone drinking under age at any given time than it will be in a place with a capacity of 120. Of course, bars could reduce the problem significantly by going 21-only, as some have done voluntarily, but then where would under age students spend their loan surplus? Not with Mike Porter; more likely, they'd take it over to Leah Cohen's place of business and get served illegally there instead.