No more alcohol downtown

Both Charles Myers’ letter (“Support downtown,” Sept. 18) and your editorial (“Liquor limit could hurt SLO,” Sept. 23) make it clear that you both feel that a vibrant downtown needs to market itself to all demographics. Save Our Downtown couldn’t agree more.

Nevertheless, we are all becoming sidetracked by focusing on what we would like to see located in our downtown, i.e., more independently owned retail and more adult-oriented entertainment.

We need, instead, to focus on what we currently have and don’t want too many alcohol outlets catering to “misbehaving” (to put it mildly) students and other young adults.

You also state that overconsumption of alcohol continues to cause problems in downtown and that efforts to resolve them haven’t made much of a difference. We couldn’t have said it better!

Save Our Downtown is not prepared to live with the fact that our crime rate is unacceptably high and that a lot of this crime is precipitated by binge drinking, which the city is aiding and abetting by approving more alcohol outlets.

You will need to prove to us that placing a cap on alcohol outlets will stifle downtown’s economy because we sincerely doubt this. In the meantime, we believe that a cap is the right and moral thing to do.

This story was originally published September 28, 2015 at 2:37 PM with the headline "No more alcohol downtown."