Gainesville City Commission puts open container restrictions back in place except in downtown entertainment districts, starting Jan. 1

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At an October 26 Special Meeting, the Gainesville City Commission reinstated their pre-COVID prohibitions on carrying open containers of alcohol on public property and established two entertainment districts. Both ordinances will become effective on January 1, 2024.

Second reading of the open container ordinance

Commissioner Ed Book made a motion to approve the ordinance, and Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker seconded the motion.

City Attorney Daniel Nee clarified that the ordinance is word-for-word the same as the ordinance that was in place prior to 2020, with the exception of some language to comply with state statutes about re-sealed containers. 

Commissioner Bryan Eastman brought up several sections of the ordinance that might have “unintended consequences,” such as a provision that alcohol sales can only occur outdoors on a porch or patio attached to a business; this might make it illegal to sell alcoholic beverages in outdoor seating areas that aren’t on a porch or patio. Eastman also objected to describing restaurants as “eating places.” 

Chief Scott: Arrests would be a “last resort”

In response to a question from Eastman about criminal penalties for carrying an open container of alcohol, Gainesville Police Department Chief Lonnie Scott said officers are instructed to initially respond to violations with a civil citation, but if the individual becomes aggressive, officers have the option of escalating to a criminal charge. Scott said Gainesville Police Department (GPD) officers would “rarely” arrest someone for an open container violation, describing it as a “last resort.”

Eastman said that “spook[ed]” him because the decision is at the discretion of the officer, and those instructions can change over time. Scott said the instructions have been the same for nine or ten years, and added, “We don’t see a need to change it because it’s functioning appropriately.” Eastman reiterated that it is “spooky” for people to suddenly be susceptible to a criminal charge for “crossing a line they may or may not see” while exiting an entertainment district. Eastman said the Commission was “rushing forward with this.”

Scott said officers are not “sitting there in a car, waiting for someone to cross a line with an open container; we’re looking at the behavior–does that behavior pose a threat to the public safety?”

Outdoor seating areas

Commissioner Casey Willits asked about One Love Cafe, for example, where people might carry open beverages to properties adjoining the restaurant, and City of Gainesville Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons said the provision about outdoor seating areas concerns the sale of alcoholic beverages, not the consumption.

Commissioner Reina Saco agreed with Eastman about protecting businesses with outdoor seating and asked for that change to be made before they voted. She also said that, as a lawyer, she found the provisions for the permitting of special events confusing; Persons agreed that it was “a little confusing.” Saco said she wasn’t in favor of the ordinance, anyway, but she particularly wanted to make sure small businesses weren’t negatively impacted; she was also concerned about ambiguity in the ordinance that makes it unclear who will be cited if people leave a permitted event with open beverages and asked that the ordinance be cleaned up before taking a second vote.

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut suggested that the City publish Frequently Asked Questions if the ordinances pass, to help people and businesses interpret the ordinance; Mayor Harvey Ward agreed with that idea. Ward also said he didn’t think they were “rushing or pushing. We had literally been working on this for months.” He said they could come back and clean up the language later.

Public comment on open containers

During public comment, Carrie Parker-Warren said she was concerned that “people that drink too much can now carry guns without permits. At one time, you could bump into somebody on the street that had had too much to drink and you say excuse me, and they tipped their hat to you and said excuse me, but now it’s almost like the wild, wild west… What they do now is they pull their guns out and they shoot you. It’s not safe to have that open container remaining.” She said she was speaking for the Azalea Trails community.

Robert Mounts, speaking for the Matheson Museum Board, the University Park Neighborhood Association Board, and as a Moms Demand Action volunteer, was in favor of “resuming full enforcement of the open container ordinance as it was pre-COVID.”

Motion amended with outdoor seating change

Persons offered updated language for outdoor seating, replacing a section about limiting outdoor alcohol sales to certain businesses with patios and porches with “within an outdoor seating area that is part of an approved use of property which is zoned and permitted for the consumption of alcoholic beverages.”

Book agreed to make that amendment to his motion. Willits said he opposed the motion because of a lack of data tying gun violence to alcohol consumption, particularly in young people.

The motion passed 4-3, with Saco, Willits, and Eastman in dissent.

Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Districts

The Commission then took up the second reading of an ordinance establishing two “Arts, Culture, & Entertainment” districts, one encompassing downtown and Depot Park and one in the Grove Street area.

Higher-resolution maps can be found here.

Allow open containers until 11:30 p.m., midnight, or 2 a.m.?

The draft ordinance allowed open containers in the public right-of-way in those two districts until 2:00 a.m., but Persons noted that the staff recommendation was still to prohibit open containers starting at 11:30 p.m. “for all the reasons that we’ve talked about, in coordination with GPD and their ability to address gatherings at an earlier time of night when their resources aren’t otherwise as tied up with downtown.”

Ward said he’d like to set the time at 11:30 p.m. and remove the light blue area from the Grove Street map, leaving the trail within the district. In response to a question from Chestnut, Persons said the light blue area is a mix of office and residential uses. Ward also wanted to prohibit open containers in public parking lots and parking garages; Persons said that would need to be in the ordinance they had just passed, and “we can certainly bring that back before the effective date of the ordinance.”

Eastman said the ordinance wasn’t really about alcohol consumption but more about “the fact that small business owners can start to use the space in front of their area for small events or the ability to enhance arts and culture and entertainment around their area.” He said he was happy to remove the blue area on the Grove Street map but wanted to revisit the maps next summer, once people realize that this ordinance is “severely restricting [alcohol] and rolling it back quite a bit from where it currently is.”

Eastman made a motion to approve the ordinance on second reading but change the time from 2 a.m. to midnight and remove the blue area on the map. He said midnight is “a much easier thing for people to remember.” Saco seconded the motion.

Saco questions prohibition on re-entering a bar with an open container of alcohol

Saco said she wanted to explain “the most resigned second probably heard on this dais.” She said she preferred 2 a.m. but acknowledged the issues for GPD. She asked about a section of the ordinance that prohibits people from entering an alcoholic beverage establishment with an open container of alcohol “whether acquired at that alcoholic beverage establishment or elsewhere.” Persons said he believed that was based on Florida statutes that prohibit bars from allowing outside alcohol into their establishment. Saco pointed out that the ordinance specifically prohibits alcohol purchased at that establishment and added, “Tallahassee’s not great at drafting, are they?”

Willits agreed that they should revisit the previous ordinance before January 1 to prohibit open containers in public parking lots and parking garages. He also preferred 2 a.m. but agreed that “12 is very clear.” He was fine with cutting out the blue area in the map because there are residential sections in that area. He thought there should also be a district in the Midtown area: “I don’t think we’re treating these areas fairly.” He said that although he wasn’t ready to propose a Midtown map, he liked that the ordinance “allows us to literally just have to add a map… We’ll see if we can get there.”

Impacts on residential neighborhoods

Chestnut disagreed with adding the Grove Street map because it “begins to encroach on… the Duck Pond” and residential areas in Grove Street. She favored an exception just for the Farmers’ Market on Mondays between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. She tried to make a motion to replace the Grove Street district with a special exception for the Farmers’ Market, but Ward said there was already a motion on the floor. 

Duncan-Walker was concerned about the impact on the Porters’ Quarters neighborhood, which is already experiencing issues with people “parking in front of driveways and blocking access to homes.” Persons said the City could address that by adding a parking decal zone there if the City Commission provided direction to do that.

Duncan-Walker asked how much it would cost to create the entertainment districts, and Persons said they don’t have an itemized budget, but there would be costs for signs along the boundaries and possibly curb-painting. He added that the ordinance requires businesses in the district to post a map of the district inside their business.

Public comment: “This is one of the biggest mistakes I think you’re about to make as Mayor”

During public comment, Maria Edwards asked that open containers only be allowed in the Grove Street neighborhood during Farmers’ Market hours. She said the Grove Street neighborhood “has never requested this designation along any of the neighborhood sections.” She said no meetings had been held in the neighborhood to see if the residents support it.

Robert Mounts said the entertainment districts are “unmanageable” over such a large area: “It’s inconsistent with arts and culture, such as the Matheson and the Hippodrome and other things offered, to call it that, when really, it’s just founded on alcohol, it’s founded on public drinking in the streets. It’s inconsistent with the crisis of gun violence that you acknowledged when you… declared it a crisis with representatives from Moms Demand Action. You’re pouring gas on the fire. This is one of the biggest mistakes I think that you’re about to make as Mayor. And I ask you, please don’t.”

Although the City Commissioners don’t typically respond to public comment, Ward responded, “Mr. Mounts, I would remind everyone that we just restricted the entire city in the previous motion from most of the same rules that we’re talking about for two relatively small areas here.”

Also during public comment, State Attorney Brian Kramer asked the Commission to prohibit open containers in parking lots and parking garages. He said the State Attorney’s Office parking lots are “the two largest free parking areas in downtown, and we have been regularly closing… the one that’s in front of my office due to issues that are related to drinking in the public lot [due to] liability… We’ve had multiple homicides and violent crimes that have occurred in our parking lot.”

Commissioners ask about funding sources

Book, who had placed a recent policy paper on entertainment districts into the meeting’s backup, said the environmental design in the district will be important for safety. He also asked about sources of funding for expenses like signs; Persons said potential funding sources had not yet been identified, “nor have we identified sort of a total cost, just a sense of what we’ll need to implement in terms of signage.”

Book said he would prefer a smaller area “and make sure we do it well, especially since there may be additional considerations down the road.” He preferred focusing on the downtown area at first “as opposed to attempting to do two things at once, in geographic areas that are just a little different, and make sure we do something well one time before we figure out other ways.”

Eastman said he hoped staff would come up with a creative way to use signage to create “a sense of place” instead of just saying, “No drinking beyond this point.” He said the district will “put more of a spotlight” on an area that makes “Gainesville… the cultural capital of Florida… I hope that we, in the future, see this as larger than [an alcohol and open container issue].”

Nee: No statute prohibiting re-entering bars with an open container

Nee said that after research, his staff had determined that there is no Florida statute prohibiting people from re-entering a bar with an open container of alcohol; he said the language likely came from a model ordinance.

Curry said the “one revenue source that is clear right now… would be out of GCRA [Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area]–there is a downtown project-based budget for GCRA, a little over $350,000… that we would utilize; there are no other funding sources that we have identified that would address the signage and other incidentals that would be necessary to implement this.” She said those funds are also being used to “work with the consultants that are helping us to vision out the strategic plan and that whole Downtown Business Improvement District.”

Ward said, “To be clear to everybody, we’re not talking about spending $350,000,” and Curry clarified that she was just identifying a source of funds. 

Duncan-Walker: “This still seems very vague to me”

Duncan-Walker said she didn’t think the City had put enough thought into what exactly they wanted to do with the districts: “These types of districts have the potential to be something incredible in the city. But for me, at this particular point, I just haven’t seen it… We have some maps that we’ve seen and some boundaries. And that’s pretty much it… This still seems very vague to me.” She said she also hadn’t seen enough on how the City planned to “protect communities… We have problems right now that have not really been addressed in ways that have satisfied my constituents and community members. So I’m a little concerned.”

Saco asked Eastman to amend his motion to remove the section that prohibits entering an establishment with an open container, and he agreed. Eastman said he also wanted to make a “double motion” to amend the open container ordinance to remove parking lots; Ward said, “Please don’t let’s go back to a thing that we’ve already voted on.”

Ward: “So this is a lessening of rights, just to be clear.”

Ward pointed out that until January 1, there are more “opportunities for public drinking than the motion that is on the table right now. What… we’re about to vote on will restrict drinking in these two districts more than it is restricted today. So this is a lessening of rights, just to be clear.” Ward said he supported Eastman’s motion although “I think that it will not change much of anything from the way things are.”

The motion passed 4-3, with Book, Chestnut, and Duncan-Walker in dissent.