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MEMORANDUM June 13, 2012 To: City Manager Malinen, City Council Members From: Dan Roe Subject: Off-Sale Liquor License Quantity As we on the council have been aware, there is interest in the marketplace to open businesses in Roseville that have as part of their model the sale of off-sale liquor in some form(often wine), such as Trader Joe's or Cost Plus World Market. The issue raised by potential developers has been the limit of 10 off-sale licenses in Roseville, all of which are currently held by existing establishments, and apparently none of which seem to be in a position to be made available, either due to continued interest in maintaining the license by the current holder or due to the price to obtain the license being too high for a prospective user to justify. I am well aware that in the past the city council has not been interested in increasing the number of off-sale liquor licenses in Roseville. However, given the keen interest by some prospective businesses, and given the continued slow economy, as well as Councilmember Johnson's interest in reconsidering the issue, I wanted to broach the subject again with the council from perhaps a bit of a different angle. It seems that one reason for limiting the number of licenses is to limit the perceived impacts on neighborhoods of having liquor stores nearby. If that is the case, it seems reasonable to conclude that liquor stores located in a primarily commercial area, such as the Regional Business area around Rosedale,would have much fewer impacts on neighborhoods, since the surrounding businesses in the RB zoned area would essentially provide a"buffer"between the liquor store and the nearest neighborhood. Therefore, it may be worth considering allowing some small number of additional off-sale liquor licenses, provided that they are located only in the RB zoned area. I would suggest that, if we do that,we still limit the number of licenses in non-RB zoned areas to the current 9. (One of our current 10 license holders is already located in the RB zoned area.) In other words, we could raise the limit to, perhaps 12 or 13 or 14,but require that no more than 9 of those may be for stores in non-RB zoned areas. In addition, if we are willing to increase the number of licenses in that manner, we may want to consider provisions to prevent"clustering" of liquor stores anywhere in the city,which may be a public safety and neighborhood quality concern, perhaps by setting a minimum spacing requirement of, say, 'A mile in non-RB zoned areas, and perhaps a closer spacing in RB zoned areas. I suggest another discussion on this matter as we consider the"tap room" license proposal.