Seattle city leaders have chosen Capitol Hill’s Century Ballroom to publicly outline a new nightlife safety initiative Tuesday night designed to updates the city’s laws regulating restaurants, bars and clubs and reduce criminal activity associated with closing time on the streets of Seattle.
Here’s SeattleCrime’s take on it:
The most exciting and likely-to-be-controversial piece of McGinn’s proposal is the potential for the city to extend cut-off times at bars around Seattle and stagger closing times to, hypothetically, put less strain on police resources. It appears the city—which brought in a consultant to study how other cities have dealt with staggered closing times—would need to appeal any change in liquor service hours to the state liquor board.
McGinn also wants to institute training requirements for club security staff, improve access to taxis and late-night buses (of course), and give police the authority to slap loud, obnoxious patrons with a civil $125 “drunken and disorderly” citation.
The Hill sees its fair share of closing time and late-night weekend assaults and various shenanigans but we mostly have not experienced the more significant violent incidents that continue to make headlines in Belltown or, a few years ago, in Pioneer Square. We’ll look more closely at the Hill’s place in this process soon. Details from the Mayor’s office on the meeting below.
Please join Mayor Mike McGinn, City Councilmember Nick Licata, the Seattle City Council, the city attorney and local nightlife leaders at the Century Ballroom on Capitol Hill tonight for the mayor’s announcement of his Seattle Nightlife Initiative, a proposal for creating a safe and vibrant nighttime economy.
Musicians from the School of Rock will play two unplugged sets during the public event.
A no-host, casual reception will immediately follow at the Tin Table.
WHEN: TONIGHT, 7:00 p.m., Tuesday July 13, 2010
WHERE: Century Ballroom, 915 E Pine
Late night buses are great, but the mayor should be pressuring Sound Transit to operate past bar-closing, at least on the weekends, especially once the light rail runs to Capitol Hill. It’s ridiculous that the safest means of transport for drunk people, our light rail, isn’t available past 12:30am…
Happy to hear that McGinn and the City Council are getting on this. I live on the Hill because I like having nightlife, but there are some things that could use improvement. It sounds like the city’s proposal addresses a lot of them – hope they can make it all work.
I agree with this in theory, although it might be significantly cheaper to give out free taxi rides.
Giving police the authority to “slap loud, obnoxious patrons with a civil $125 ‘drunken and disorderly’ citation” is a drastic improvement over the current alternative of having to arrest them, which as I understand it, is their only option now. Being able to write a ticket and move on allows the cops to stay productive in keeping the neighborhood reasonably quieter and safer.
Does night life offer more than getting drunk on fairly expensive booze?
Lets hope the concept expands a bit – the liquor board is not in the clutches of local bar owners – they must agree to any changes, and that will be a hard sell. Seattle changes will be export to the rest of the state to be fair.
Laws need to be uniform and fair – if you are drunk and disorderly than that standard has to apply all over the city. It is not at all against the law to be drunk per se …. Adjudicated to the state supremes long ago. And disorderly might be a kicker, ie. SPD, if you are young and black …. or eccentric, or …. don’t spend a lot of money …..or homeless …or………..
The problems stem not so much from the 2:00 AM last call, but from the Liquor Control Board’s insane and draconian insistence that all alcohol sold in a bar be off the table by 2:00 AM. The Liquor Control Board’s strong enforcement of this rule ironically encourages people to order shots and doubles at last call and suck them down as quickly as possible while impatient servers, who are rightfully afraid of massive fines, try to round up all the glasses. If it was possible to order a drink up till 2:00 AM, and then relax with your drink until you finished in your own time, there would not be a mad rush of drunken people pouring into the streets at 1:45 AM, This problem is CAUSED by the Washington State Liquor Control Board. They should be held accountable. Actually, they should be disbanded.
The proposed sound level of 80 dBC inside a residence is unacceptably high, it’s essentially a broad approval for all club owners to turn UP the volume, complaints and severe sleep disturbance occur FAR below 80 dBC.
It’s disappointing to see that the Nightlife Advisory Board’s recommendations are being ignored by the Mayor, one of which being 80 dBC at 6 feet from the establishment, which is very reasonable and enforceable.
Adam C. Jenkins
Seattle, WA