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PrintCouncil to review tasting room rules
The Sonoma City Council will look at parking times at Monday’s meeting.
Bill Hoban/Index-Tribune
Despite the expression of frequent public concern that Sonoma’s historic Plaza is now awash in door-to-door wine tasting rooms, a report by Sonoma Planning Director David Goodison reveals that, out of 135 ground-floor businesses in the Plaza Retail Overlay Zone, 15 are purely wine-tasting enterprises and four are a combination of wine tasting and other retail business.
That ratio, reported Goodison’s study, results in a 15.5 percent slice of the retail Plaza pie for wine tasting. But, he also reported, when you add five other tasting rooms just outside the Plaza Retail Overlay Zone, that raises the number to 24, which represents 18.6 percent.
Under current language in the city’s development code, wine tasting is not listed as a specific use, but rather falls under the category of “general retail” and therefore has no other specific regulatory standard to meet, although tasting rooms, like all alcohol point of sale sites, are regulated by the State Office of Alcohol and Beverage Control.
Among issues posed by the increasing presence of tasting rooms is their potential adverse impact on the character of the Plaza, the danger that tasting rooms morph into de facto bars or taverns, the relationship between high-traffic tasting rooms and its impact on Plaza parking, and the proliferation of businesses that sell alcohol, with potential for increased incidence if drunk driving.
In response to that concern, Sonoma Police Chief Bret Sackett prepared a memo for the city, in which he noted that 56 percent of DUI arrests in town involve people who had their final drink at an ABC-licensed facility.
Sonoma, he said, has a higher number of off-sale alcohol establishments than recommended by criteria developed by the ABC.
New tasting rooms need an ABC license, preceded by a “Letter of Public Convenience or Necessity,” from the chief of police. Sackett reported that the term “public conveyance or necessity” is poorly defined by the ABC, but that he considers a variety of criteria in approving such a letter, including:
• The proposed use will not be detrimental to the character of immediate neighborhood.
• Proximity to sensitive land use issues.
• There are no conflicts with zoning regulations.
• The economic benefit outweighs the negative impacts to the community.
• The license will provide a needed service not currently being met in the community.
• Unique and unusual circumstances to justify a new retail alcohol outlet when there are already similar alcohol uses existing nearby (this is much more difficult to establish).
Sackett concluded that the city cannot rely on the ABC license process “to regulate wine tasting businesses without other local zoning regulations.”
Goodison’s memo outlines a variety of regulatory actions to further manage and control tasting rooms, including a variety of permit options and general operating standards.
The City Council will be asked to offer its insight and direction on the issue at its regular meeting on Monday, March 18.
Also on the council’s agenda will be consideration of a proposal to extend the downtown free parking period from two hours to three; a report on the Sonoma Tourism Improvement District; and discussion of the Sonoma County Water Agency’s new budget.
The City Council will meet in the Community Meeting Room, at 177 First St. W., at 6 p.m. The public is invited to attend.
Please note: Your full name will be published with your comment.
Editor,
A word of comfort to those that feel there are too many wine Tasting Rooms in downtown Sonoma: It will all shake out in the end. Some of the recently opened businesses will thrive; some will find reality to be less rewarding than they had projected and will quietly close their doors. 'Twas ever thus...
The only meaningful vote in terms of which businesses will exist and which won't is to vote with your purchasing dollars. We may bemoan the fact that the old "Food City" grocery, Mission Hardware and Rexall drug stores (I used to patronize each of these businesses)are no longer here but as long as people find the prices and selection to be more attractive at the larger chain stores these small independents will fall by the wayside. If you shop at Baksheesh and Bram and Readers Books and Sonoma Slver, etc. then good on ya; if you don't then all the bemoaning of lost local retail businesses is absolutely meaningless.
In small towns across this country we see empty, boarded up storefronts in dead or dying downtown disricts. We are extraordinarily lucky in our little corner of the planet; we have a thriving, vibrant downtown with a healthy local economy. As long as there is a desire and demand for this business model that accentuates what is uniquely our product (the wine we produce; the venue to present and sample the fruits of our labors)in an enjoyable as well as educational environment, this model will continue to exist.
Let's also define what constitutes a Tasting Room; if the model is to serve wines by the glass (or bottle) in a sit down setting (with the hours creeping later into the evening)let's call it what it is: a Wine Bar. If the model is to present and sample the wares (encouraging guests to taste broadly but moderately and to utilise the dump bucket)and to educate about wine, that, then, is truly a Tasting Room.
And to (very loosely) paraphrase "Scoop" Nisker: If you don't see the business that you like, make one of your own!
Alan Wastell
Well said!
The small increase in the number of tasting rooms on the Plaza is a result of the filling up of what has been for many years an empty alley: the Sonoma Courtyard Shops. This lovely adjunct to our Plaza has struggled from the beginning; even though it is a few steps off the Plaza there have been few commercial successes and many failures in the last 15 years. Now that small, locally owned wineries have opened tasting rooms the Sonoma Courtyard Shops is vibrant and cheerful instead of empty and blighted.
We are a town that thrives because of our remarkably successful wine industry....creating an arbitrary number of possible tasting rooms is both undemocratic and unnecessary. As Mr. Wastell comments above....let the market decide.
George Webber