Hooray for July 1!

This afternoon the city council unanimously voted to issue a full intoxicating beverage license to Two Chez, and a non-quota license to Nordic Village.
Our license will be effective July 1st.
Thank you so much to everyone who has helped/supported this effort.
We truly believe this license will help our business flourish and help us to better serve our tourist business (and the locals, of course).
We'll continue to work with the state to change the quota numbers for future licenses. Look for updates here. We're hoping to meet with Rep. Ballweg tomorrow.

Non-Quota

The city council voted at the last meeting to move forward with two important steps on the liquor license front. First, they decided to issue a non-quota, FULL liquor license to the Green Lake Marina (opening in the next week, I think) based on the fact that the building complies with the non-quota requirement of seating capacity for 300. So the city, the fire department, the police chief, and the building inspector all went down to the building to eye and determine that it meets the criteria. This is going to be recorded by the city clerk. Incidentally, we pointed out the to city three years ago that the Nordic Village Building (formerly JT skewers) meets the same criteria (might even been more square footage than the marina), and they discussed FINALLY going to check it out. This is an important point. Read on..
The second important step is that the city issued a notice of revocation to Nordic Village/Agent Steve Sorenson (atty) based on the fact that the JT Skewers business wasn't open for 150 days in the license period. There's more to this story, but essentially, they have the right to a hearing to dispute the facts and defend their point. This meeting is being scheduled now.
But it looks like they can still keep a full liquor license based on capacity. So we're working with them and the city to get the 300 capacity recorded and basically swap out the license in hopes that the city will issue it to Two Chez.
There's been a lot of commenting on how 'We knew we would only get a beer/wine license when we opened'.. Just to comment back on that - we did know. We were also told by the city that they would be working to increase the quota. And beer/wine was okay for the first year or so. But the business is growing and people have expectations - especially tourists. Plus, a business doesn't have the same needs in it's sixth year as it does in it's first. Who the heck cares anyway. If we want to sell drinks we should be able to. That's what people do - they eat, and they drink.
And for the record, every week we have people walk in the door, and turn around and walk out when they find out they can't have a martini. It's hard enough to get new people in the door, and a real bummer when they walk out. And most of them comment on how ridiculous it is that we aren't allow to serve.
Next meeting with the city should be Monday.

Meeting Tonight

Thank you to all of our friends and customers who have expressed their opinions in support of our endeavor. Last week, the City administration committee voted YES to recommending that the council commence procedure to revoke the abandoned license from the Nordic Hill property.
There are a lot of rumors about a potential new business opening there. For the good of Green Lake, we hope more businesses open. The Green Lake Marina is hopefully going to open again this summer. Either way, we've been open for six years now. We've been involved in our community, our kids goto school here, and frankly, we need this license to keep the doors open. We are hoping that community support and honest dialog with the city will prompt action to support an existing business instead of the 'chance' of a new one. We'll see.
The meeting is at 7pm at city hall if you care to show up and express an opinion.
We've also invite our state rep, Joan Ballweg to attend, hoping she will see the importance of the issue and help direct us to a path that will get the state to pay attention to this quota situation.