Art in the Park will be allowed to sell wine
The City Council voted 4-2 to allow alcohol sales at the 48th annual event on June 3 and 4 sponsored by the Columbia Art League.
Published May 2, 2006
Art in the Park will sell bottles of wine this year after the City Council debated Monday about what type of liquor sales should be allowed at festivals in the city's parks.
"We have obvious concerns that large student organizations might try to take advantage of this new policy," Mayor Darwin Hindman said after the meeting. "We already have so many problems in the East Campus neighborhoods, so it causes us to have concerns about having alcohol at events in the city."
The City Council voted 4-2 to allow alcohol sales at the 48th annual event on June 3-4. The Columbia Art League sponsors Art in the Park.
Jill Stedem, executive director of the Columbia Art League, said she is excited the measure passed with the revisions she suggested.
The Council amended the report to include allowing only one bottle of wine to be sold per person and to have the booth close an hour before the festival ends at 5 p.m. Also, the wine sales will only be in a roped-off tent.
"We want to eventually expand to a wine garden at the festival hopefully," Stedem said.
The wine that will be sold is from the Les Bourgeois Vineyards and Winery and will feature art on the label from a contest Art in the Park runs every year.
"We have a lot of people come from all over Missouri and even from out of state, so it will be great for people to be able to take a bottle of wine with a label from one of three artists that won the art competition," Stedem said.
Columbia police Chief Randy Boehm said the restrictions did not address his concerns about the precedent set by allowing a vendor to sell alcohol at events in the park. He said he is worried other events might try to get alcohol licenses, and the precedent has been set that the city will give them.
Second Ward Councilman Chris Janku said he is worried that the city does not have defined standards about what the requirements are for being allowed to sell alcohol at similar festivals.
Fifth Ward Councilman Laura Nauser said she is not worried about the precedent that this will set.
"There are a lot of other communities with park festivals that sell wine," Nauser said. "Now that we've opened the door to these type of alcohol sales, the staff will need to come up with a policy to address these types of concerns."
Hindman said the city used to have a strict policy on not allowing any alcohol to be sold in any city park. Now the city allows alcohol sales at its baseball stadiums and golf clubs.
"It is an evolving process," Hindman said. "We have to be cautious about allowing vendors to sell alcohol, so this is serving as an experiment, not a precedent, and we will evaluate how the event went afterwards."
