Council
Approves High-end Wine Outlet on Main Street |
By Jorge Casuso
January 10 -- Dispelling the notion that bums will buy
a bottle of boutique wine at 8 in the morning, the Santa Monica
City Council Tuesday night approved an alcohol license for an upscale
grocery store at the former Boulangerie site.
With a 6 to 1 vote -- Council member Bobby Shriver being the only dissenter
-- the council denied an appeal that would have barred the sale of wine at a
proposed retail store on the ground floor of a new107-unit apartment building
on Main Street.
“This was the site of the Boulangerie,” said Council member Ken
Genser, who made the motion to deny the appeal of the Planning Commission’s
decision to grant a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for alcohol sales.
“It was a place to buy nice quality wines and food to take out,”
Genser said. “This is an appropriate use for the street.”
The appellants -- the owner of nearby Star Liquor and a hastily assembled group
of residents calling themselves Concerned Citizens of Santa Monica -- had argued
there already is an undue concentration of alcohol outlets in the area.
Adding another store, they said, “will result in public intoxication,
drunk driving, traffic accidents, violent crime, noise, and nuisance,”
according to the City staff report.
“There is continuing and increasing community concern over the over-proliferation
of alcohol outlets,” said Joshua Kaplan, the attorney for the appellants.
“There are enough alcohol outlets to meet the perceived community need.”
Kaplan argued that allowing the proposed retail grocery store, Goudas &
Vines, to sell wine and hold wine tastings violated State code, which allowed
four alcohol outlets on the census tract. The new store would bring the current
total to eight.
But the council noted that exceptions to the code could be made if it can be
shown there is a “public necessity.”
The proposed store is different than existing outlets, said Brandon Kim, whose
father Hwan Kim applied for the license, which will allow the sale of wine,
but not hard liquor, from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.
The new 2,710-square-foot store would open early to sell coffee and rolls and
would carry “boutique, specialized, unique wines that are very rare, very
hard to get,” said Kim, who added that the cheapest bottle will sell for
$15.
Alcohol would account for 25 percent of the sales at the store, which will
resemble a “miniature Bristol Farms” and carry cheeses from across
the world and balsamic vinegar that has been aged 100 years, Kim said.
“Wine is a minimal amount of our sales total,” Kim said. “We
want to be as responsible as we can.”
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