| Can you feel the Christmas spirit?
Right before breaking for the winter holidays, Montrose's City Council handed down a narrow decision that brought plenty of Christmas spirit to local liquor store owners and producers.
After a postponed decision and much discussion and public input, the council voted 3-2 against allowing City Market to sell hard liquor at its southern location.
The decision was welcomed by local business owners, but many, including council members, expected a legal challenge to follow.
I was surprised, after covering the story, that the issue never seemed to come up again. But, I figured it was time to give our readers an update, so I called up Mayor Dave Frank this morning.
Of course, City Market attorneys had filed suit as predicted.
But in what I could call, to keep the puns going, a late Christmas miracle, it didn't matter. Kroger lost one of the licenses it needed to qualify for the type of liquor license it had pursued, rendering the whole issue dead in the water. Soon after, the state passed a bipartisan law eliminating new licenses of that kind and killing the chance for any grocery or convenience store that doesn't already one to start selling liquor.
For mom and pops, it's a great late Christmas gift. For Montrose, it might have been some luck too, because my gut feeling is that would have been a tough lawsuit.
Either way, with the suit gone and the license type practically retired, we'll have to keep buying eggnog from local shops for the forseeable future.
It was nice to put a bow on this story, and we'll have all the details in an upcoming paper.
Cheers,
Kylea from the newsroom
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