THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603150190
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On The Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The ongoing flap over the 29th Street Brew-Thru brings up an interesting question.
Is it fair to deny an off-premises ABC license for a drive-through convenience store, when more than 100 other outlets at the Oceanfront can legally sell beer and wine to take-out customers?
What does another take-out beer and wine store mean to a resort already cluttered with them?
As anyone who has ever walked the strip knows, there are 500 jillion T-shirt and souvenir stores.
You can buy T-shirts bearing messages that would make a Marine gunny sergeant blush or cute little bamboo knickknacks made in Taiwan. Would another such outlet bring down the wrath of the General Assembly, the City Council and the Women's Temperance Union?
I doubt it.
Or, how about more hotels on the Oceanfront? By last count, there are 75 of them now and 155 in the city. Is it fair to deny an investor the opportunity to build another one? Owners of existing resort hotels might give you a thousand reasons why one more should not be allowed.
And anyone living near the Brew-Thru may have a few choice opinions about why it should not open its doors. In fact, they would probably tell you they hope the developers would take their Brew-Thru and go away.
Or, if you owned a business next door, such as a hotel, a restaurant, another convenience store or a T-shirt shop, you might feel some antipathy toward it. Competition can sour one's view of the new guy on the block.
But if you are an investor like Domino's Pizza czar George Hazzis, ice cream entrepreneur Harry Tully or food broker David Womick, you are probably wondering why everyone is making such a fuss over this one particular store.
There has been a lot of blather about the Brew-Thru contributing to the problem of drinking and driving on resort streets and the potential for attracting unwanted crowds of punks to the Oceanfront, but it really boils down to an issue of fairness. If you're going to disallow one take-out beer and wine business, disallow them all.
If your goal is to convert the Beach into a wall-to-wall monastery, where prayer, silence, abstinence and pure thoughts are the rule, then close up all the bikini shops and bars; ban liquor, wine and beer sales across the board; and decree mandatory daily worship of the deity of your choice.
The truth is, the Beach always has been sort of a rough and rowdy place and is likely to remain so until a newer, quieter and richer crowd decides the Beach is where they want to vacation.
The No. 1 rule in the marketplace is that you sell what people want to buy or you go broke.
To this point, it seems - despite considerable efforts by city tourism officials and planners - existing resort businesses are offering what the market demands. In other words, they're selling what people want to buy. by CNB