Hard to Swallow

Nancy Vasquez, with her slight frame and strawberry blond hair, bears little resemblance to the black-bonneted, hatchet-wielding Carry Nation.

But in recent months, residents have closely identified the 31-year-old Vasquez with the American temperance figure. The reason: Vasquez’s organization has made a mission of stricter liquor licensing in this city’s bustling Old Town.

State Street--an entertainment strip brimming with bars, restaurants and 24-hour stores--has become a target of Vasquez’s Community Alcohol Problem Prevention Project, or CAPPP, which says that the district might provide tourists with too good a time.

The group, consisting of several dozen residents, has tried to persuade Santa Barbarans that their beloved State Street party zone is a troubling example of a liquor licensing system gone awry.

Vasquez’s group approached the City Council last month with a proposal to limit the number of licenses in the district, saying that the concentration of liquor-serving establishments drained the rest of the city of its police force and contributed to safety concerns.

But the suggestion that the fun zone should be curbed puzzles those who have seen the area as a model for successful downtown revitalization. It also angers tavern owners.

The council rejected the group’s plan, deciding instead to form a task force to assess the situation.

Undeterred, the group is revising its proposal and plans to contest every license that comes up for review.

“We’re not about prohibition, we’re about planning,” said Vasquez, who works in drug and alcohol prevention programs at USC. “If this area is going to serve a variety of people and interests, you have to plan for that and you can’t do that with this many places serving alcohol.”

Walking down State Street, the center of what has become known to some as the party district, Vasquez gestured toward the taverns and wine-serving restaurants that she thinks are closing in. Vasquez used Police Department statistics to make her point.

“We’re seeing an increase in problems here,” she said. “One-third of the police force’s resources are down here and most alcohol-related events are coming from this one area.”

Wet and dry alike agree that on State Street, spirits flow a bit more freely than in the rest of Santa Barbara: The street, dotted with palms, has 37 establishments with liquor licenses in just three blocks.

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Carl Dewing, information officer at the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Department, acknowledged that the concentration of licenses for Santa Barbara does surpass the state’s maximum in both on-sale licenses, for restaurants and bars, and off-sale licenses, for 24-hour stores. Although California law provides for no more than one on-sale license for every 2,000 people, Santa Barbara has one for every 281. For off-sale licenses, the state standard is one per 2,500 people. Santa Barbara has one for every 112.

“Those are both over the limit,” Dewing said. “For some areas like Santa Barbara, which are considered tourist areas, it’s not unusual. The law says that where there is an over-concentration but not high crime in an area, the local agencies may sign a letter of public convenience and necessity that would allow a higher concentration.”

Police spend a third of their resources in Old Town, but contend that the area does not qualify as a high-crime area. Robberies in the area have increased from nine in 1992 to 12 in 1996. Assaults have risen from 13 in 1992 to 22 in 1996. Rapes have decreased from one in 1992 to none last year.

Santa Barbara Police Lt. Nick Katzenstein said: “Yes, there are more crimes in the area, but at the same time, if you were to spread these businesses out I don’t know that it would reduce the amount of crime.”

The group links the availability of alcohol to congestion and weekend rabble-rousers in the district.

Local entrepreneurs say that they have followed state rules governing Santa Barbara’s licensing and that residents can contest license requests. Some say that the rising number of people in an area is bound to create occasional disturbances.

Before a substantial revitalization effort was launched by the city six years ago, the area was a desolate district of boarded-up buildings. Today, it is a major source of revenue for the city and a tourist destination. Hundreds of visitors come each weekend to meet, eat and drink, a phenomenon that owners say has made the district more secure.

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Ron Hayes, a real estate broker who has handled many properties with liquor licenses in the area, questioned the activists’ allegations of declining safety. “When I started leasing bars in 1986,” Hayes said, “it was a downtrodden, underdeveloped part of town. I used to have to go down and pass out $1 bills to the vagrants just to get them out of the area. Now people love it. It’s been the [owners of] bars and restaurants who spent tons of money to revitalize it and now they’re being called a problem.”

Although the activists’ proposal hit a snag with the City Council, their drive has spawned an unprecedented number of license protests, and Hayes is feeling the impact. For the first time, he is seeing permits contested, primarily by the same few residents, he said.

Included in the group’s proposed ordinance is a cap on the amount of money that any establishment could have in its register during late-night hours, a minimum distance between bars and strict guidelines on the advertisements that licensed establishments could use. Although the group’s permit would exempt existing businesses from the proposed regulations, it also said the exemption would expire if a business closed for 30 days.

Activist Les Jones said diversification of the area is good for business.

“We’re maintaining the integrity of the business community by putting in rules,” he said. “This will make sure that State Street is available and safe for everyone.”

Jones considered the current conditions to be “a pre-blight, college student atmosphere. If this is allowed to go on, it will burn itself out. It’s just clear that not every business down there can be a bar.”

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Councilman Gregg Hart found the conditions of the permit to be “a one-size-fits-all approach that was not appropriate for the area.” Although he did not rule out the possibility of local regulation in the future, he did say that it would be up to the task force to decide.

It is unlikely that the group will accept anything less than City Council action.

The group has done a substantial amount of work that business owners appreciate. Members organized a crackdown on underage drinking, set up youth programs to reach out to children, and counseled those who have been arrested for driving under the influence.

The proposed restrictions, however, have many people saying that the group has gone too far.

Bob Stout, owner of the Wildcat Lounge in the disputed zone and the operator of eateries on State Street for two decades, said the group’s concerns reach far beyond State Street.

“What you have in Santa Barbara is a sleepy town,” Stout said. “It’s pretty conservative. So these restaurants and bars are the only places open after 11 o’clock and the whole thing gets into this ‘90s mentality of ‘is alcohol really a bad thing?’ ”

Hart said the organization, though well-intentioned, might be spreading itself too thin.

“It’s true that it’s a bigger societal issue. Yes, alcohol is related to a substantial number of problems, that’s the reality of life today. But alcohol is legal. The trick is to find out what’s the appropriate thing to do about it.”