SEAL BEACH : City Runneth Over With Liquor Licenses

Residents who have complained that there are too many businesses selling alcohol in the Old Town area may find that a soon-to-be released city report backs up their claims.

A Planning Department report has found that Seal Beach has more liquor licenses in effect than it should. The largest discrepancy is in Old Town along Main Street, the report says.

According to the report, there are 25 businesses along Main Street with liquor licenses permitting on-site liquor sales, such as restaurants. Businesses with off-site licenses, which include liquor stores and drugstores, total eight. The total number of businesses with liquor licenses in Seal Beach is 54.

However, according to 1979 guidelines established by the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, there should only be eight on-site licenses and five off-site licenses along Main Street. Those numbers are derived from a formula that uses crime statistics and concentration of liquor licenses already in the area to determine whether additional permits should be granted, said Dale Rasmussen, district administrator for the ABC.

William and Gail Ayers, Old Town residents for 21 years, said they don’t need a city report to tell them that there are too many businesses along Main Street selling alcohol.

“It is a situation that is out of control,” William Ayers told the City Council on Monday.

Ayers said the peace in their Central Avenue home is disturbed almost nightly by drunken patrons returning to their cars after a Main Street drinking spree. He added that he has removed most of the bushes from around his house because people were falling in them regularly, crushing them or using them as urinals.

“The number of bars have totally destroyed the quality of life in Old Town,” he said. “Most people moved here because it was a quiet town. All of a sudden we have a Newport Beach and a Belmont Shore,” he said.

Even with the numbers to back the complaints, city and ABC officials said there is little they can do in terms of trimming the number of businesses with alcohol licenses. “Once these licenses are there, the only way you can get them out of there is if they commit some kind of violation, or fail to renew license fees in a timely fashion,” Rasmussen said.

City Manager Jerry L. Bankston said most of the bars and restaurants serving alcohol have been in business for years and that the study will most likely be used to institute some kind of uniformity for hours of operation. Currently, businesses, which must obtain a conditional use permit from the city and a liquor license from the ABC, are either operating under hours set by their use permits or by guidelines set by the ABC.

The Planning Commission is expected to review the study at an upcoming meeting.