The Seattle City Council unanimously approved a resolution supporting a petition to the Washington State Liquor Control Board (LCB) to create extended service hour areas within local jurisdictions on Monday. The proposal was originally proposed by Mayor Mike McGinn as part of his new Seattle Nightlife Initiative, which aims to maintain public safety and improve support for local businesses by providing greater flexibility to adapt to market demands from business district to business district.

“A vibrant, safe nightlife is good for business and good for public safety,” Mayor Mike McGinn said in a press release Monday. “The City Council’s approval of this resolution follows a broad public outreach over the past year about how extended liquor service hours should work in Seattle… I’m confident that by working together with the Washington State Liquor Control Board, we can achieve our goals of a more safe and vibrant city.”

The resolution launches a two-step process to extend service hours:

• The resolution asks the LCB to build a regulatory framework to consider and approve petitions from cities to allow extended liquor service.
• If these proposed rule changes are adopted, Mayor McGinn, the City Council, and the City Attorney can then work with the public to craft a specific proposal for extended hours service in Seattle.

A number of other local leaders have come out in support of the initiative, including City Council president Richard Conlin, Seattle Police Chief John Diaz, and City Attorney Pete Holmes.

“We believe that this initiative will strengthen public safety as well as promote a vibrant nightlife. We fully support this effort,“ Diaz said in a statement. Given that police resources are often challenged at Seattle’s blanket 2 a.m. closing time, many in law enforcement say this, along with other components of the Initiative, will help them maintain public safety and allow them to deploy officers more effectively. Last August the city passed another initiative aimed at helping combat difficult closing times allowing officers to dish out $100 tickets for fighting, threatening others, or making excessive or “unreasonable noise” in public areas between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m.

“The City Attorney’s Office will work with the Mayor, SPD and the City Council to ensure that the proposed rule changes provide comprehensive safeguards that will ensure public safety,” Holmes said. “The extended hours program will succeed if we anticipate and plan for problems that may arise.”

According to the city, the rule change application will be submitted to the Liquor Control Board in the next few weeks, at which point the LCB will have 60 days to decide whether or not it will initiate the rule making process. Mayor McGinn says he is hopeful that the extended service hours proposal will be approved and ready for implementation in Seattle in 2012.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has announced a proposal for changing state policy to allow cities to allow extended service hours for Seattle nightlife. The plan is part of Seattle’s comprehensive Nightlife Initiative, which aims to maintain public safety and provide businesses with greater flexibility to adapt to the market demands of residents and visitors.

In a nutshell, McGinn’s plan is to stagger closing times at certain bars and clubs to ease the strain on police resources. As it is now, Seattle Police can be stretched thin at 2 a.m. when every bar and club lets out, especially in certain busy business districts, like Ballard, Belltown, Capitol Hill, and even parts of Upper and Lower Queen Anne.

“We’ve talked to the public, we’ve talked to businesses, we’ve talked to neighbors, and this is something the community wants us to do,” said Mayor Mike McGinn

The City Council will hear the resolution in committee on July 19 and a vote to follow soon afterward. The rule change application will be submitted to the Washington State Liquor Control Board (LCB) by August 31. The LCB then has 60 days to decide whether to initiate the rule making process. Mayor McGinn hopes to have extended service hours implemented in Seattle in 2012.

What do you think Queen Anne? Would extending alcohol service hours improve closing-time noise, public safety and the local marketplace for small businesses, or would it have negative effects on the surrounding communities?

Publicola published an interesting story yesterday that raised the question of whether or not Seattle should extend the current closing time from 2 to 4 a.m. across the board, or stagger times throughout the city in an attempt to improve public safety. From Publicola,

The theory is that by encouraging staggered closing times, the thousands of customers who roll out onto the street at  am would be dispersed over the night. This would take pressure off of SPD, allowing them to do better, more focused enforcement. It would also help curb drunk driving (at 2 am there is little taxi cab availability due to the spiked demand for cabs with everyone settling up at the same time.) There would also be less concentration of noise on the streets at 2am solving one of the most frequent complaints from downtown residents. And of course with an increase in operating hours comes an increase in revenue (and jobs) for bars, and in turn, more revenue to the State and City.

Many cities across the country have started extending liquor service to 3 and 4 a.m., while a few have tried 24-hour service, including Birmingham, Alabama, Atlantic City, Memphis and the entire states of Nevada and Louisiana. Read Publicola’s full story here.

Since both Lower and Upper Queen Anne have a large bar and lounge presence, there’s no doubt the hill would be greatly affected by any change to the city’s current closing time. So, Queen Anne, what do you think? Should Seattle keep closing time at 2 a.m., extend it, or stagger it? Do you think this would improve safety in the neighborhood?