Feb 09, 2005 - 23:35:29 CST
Allowing North Dakota cities to match Minnesota's new 2 a.m. bar closing time is essential to keep border restaurants and bars in business, owners said as the Legislature opened a debate about an extra hour for drinking.Since bars in Moorhead, Minn., have been permitted to stay open an hour beyond North Dakota's 1 a.m. closing time, many customers have begun avoiding Fargo, said Greta Lauerman, who owns two Jim Lauerman's bar and restaurant businesses with her two brothers.
"The kids skip downtown Fargo because the lines for the Moorhead bars are so long," Lauerman told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. "You're not going to waste your time in Fargo, so you can go and waste last call in Moorhead, standing in line outside of the bar."
John Krein, owner of Rooter's Bar in Fargo, displayed a ledger sheet showing a 22 percent drop in his business, from $547,681 in 2002 to $425,775 in 2004. Moorhead's 2 a.m. closing time took effect July 1, 2003.
Krein has 11 employees now, seven fewer than he had in 2002, he said in a written statement submitted at Wednesday's hearing.
The Judiciary Committee is considering a bill that would allow North Dakota city and county governments to approve a 2 a.m. local bar closing time. The House will vote on the measure later. Areas not covered by a 2 a.m. local ordinance would still be governed by the 1 a.m. closing time in state law.
The legislation includes a provision that a person's 21st birthday does not arrive until 3 a.m. for drinking purposes. The language is intended to stop "power hour" drinking binges between midnight and 1 a.m. after a person has just turned 21.
On Wednesday, the Senate approved a separate bill, which would prohibit someone who just turned 21 from buying alcohol until 8 a.m. on the day of his or her birthday.
Kari Olson, a 14-year-old freshman at Bismarck St. Mary's High School, was the only person to oppose the measure at Wednesday's hearing, though some Judiciary Committee members had skeptical questions of the bill's proponents.
Olson does baby-sitting work, and she said the bill will keep parents out later. She is getting her driver's license this week, and asked legislators to "please consider keeping the roads safer for me."
"Please consider how keeping the bars open later will affect the innocent bystanders, baby sitters, drinkers, and the bars themselves," she said. "Innocent bystanders have to put up with the foolish acts of drunks, and pay for them."
Two years ago, the Minnesota Legislature allowed businesses that sell alcohol to stay open until 2 a.m., if their local governing board agreed.
Bars also must obtain a special license from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and pay a fee, which ranges from $200 to $600, depending on the annual liquor sales of each business.
Since the Moorhead City Council agreed to allow city bars to stay open until 2 a.m., a dozen have obtained the required licenses.
Rep. Blair Thoreson, R-Fargo, who lives near a traffic route to North Dakota State University, said he made a point one evening of observing cars returning from Moorhead. At 2:10 a.m., Thoreson said, "you'd have thought it was a 5 o'clock traffic jam."
"A lot of (Fargo bars) are sitting pretty empty," Thoreson said. "And yet you can drive across the border, and at 10 p.m., you'll find parking lots full, and all the seats full in these establishments."
The East Grand Forks, Minn., City Council has declined to authorize later closings, but Jon Bonzer, who owns Bonzer's bar and restaurant in downtown Grand Forks, said he expects the council will support a 2 a.m. closing time this summer.
Bonzer said his business, which he rebuilt after the 1997 Red River flooding that swamped downtown Grand Forks, could not stand the losses that Fargo businesses sustained after Moorhead watering holes began staying open later.
Bonzer told legislators the Grand Forks market "is still reeling from the devastation of the flood."
"I can't imagine what we would do," he said. "I'm still carrying flood debt, and the results would be devastating."
Ted O'Shaughnessy, who started the Sports Bar & Grill in downtown Fargo and later sold it to his children, said the business has been losing money since Moorhead bars began staying open later. His children cannot meet payments on a contract to acquire the business, and he has plowed some retirement savings into the bar, O'Shaughnessy said.
Greta Lauerman said she and her brothers took over the two Jim Lauerman's bar-restaurants when their father, after whom the businesses are named, died last September.
The complexities of running a business are "new to us, with our dad passing away," she said. "It's a very easy opportunity for us just to pack up and leave, too. We don't really need to stay in business, if it's not going to support our future."
The bill is HB1383.
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