After years of fighting a longstanding liquor sales ban in Jacksonville and Sherwood, city officials in Pulaski County’s two neighboring cities are preparing for what they believe is their best opportunity to usher in alcohol sales to a “dry” pocket in an otherwise “wet” county.
Legislation passed during this year’s regular session, Act 144, allows the Jacksonville and Sherwood city councils to call a special election regarding alcohol sales in Gray Township, an old voting district that spans a majority of Jacksonville, a portion of Sherwood and a sliver of unincorporated Pulaski County.
The special election would mark the first time voters in Gray Township would consider altering their local alcohol sales ban since it was passed in the mid-1950s.
Voting districts across the county were abolished by the mid-1980s, but their alcohol rules remained in place. Only voters within the original boundaries of Gray Township, which stands at 23,922 voters today, can reverse the 60-year-old ban that prohibits the sale of alcohol.
City councils in Sherwood and Jacksonville plan to consider ordinances in mid- to late summer that would allow alcohol sales in their cities, according to officials in both cities. If passed, the ordinances would allow the election commission to call an election this fall, either Oct. 10 or Nov. 14, according to the county clerk’s office.
The election would ask voters to allow restaurants to serve alcohol by the drink. Bars, clubs, liquor stores and strip clubs would not be allowed within the township’s limits, and grocery stores and gas stations would not be allowed to sell wine or beer.
Restaurants also would be required to derive no more than 30 percent of their sales from alcohol.
“We’ve been talking about doing this for years,” said Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher, who believes the city’s growth has been stunted without the jobs and revenue generated by such restaurants.
“This is not just about alcohol, as it is about economic development and creating opportunities to rebuild and redefine our downtown area,” he said.
Fletcher said he and his economic development team have traveled across the country looking for restaurant and hotel chains to recruit to Jacksonville.
“When they realize you’re in a dry area, you can almost see a wall go up,” Fletcher said. “You’ve got thousands of cities that are wanting their business. Why go somewhere that’s automatically dry? Because that’s where they make their money.”
State Rep. Bob Johnson, D-Jacksonville — who sponsored the recent legislation — called it “upgrading your curb appeal” for those traveling the U.S. 67/167 corridor.
“You’ll have new businesses, it will mean more people will want to live here, more things to do,” Johnson said. “It’s time for us to grow.”
City leaders in Jacksonville and Sherwood are coordinating to create a single campaign aimed at convincing voters to pass the change.
The issue would have to pass in both cities for alcohol to be sold throughout the township. If voters in one city approve the sale but it fails in the other city, it would simply shrink the dry pocket.
“There are restaurants moving into Sherwood, like the new Saltgrass that will be coming in here soon, but they’re all moving south” of the district’s southwest boundary, Sherwood Alderman Beverly Williams said. “Our residents that are north need to have the same access to amenities. There’s no need for them to leave our city and let that sales tax benefit surrounding cities.”
Currently, the only exception to the alcohol sales ban in Gray Township is through the state’s private-club law. Originating in the 1960s, the law was created to allow country clubs, veterans clubs and fraternal lodges to obtain alcohol permits in dry counties.
But some for-profit businesses, like Chili’s Bar and Grill in Jacksonville, have used the private-club law to serve alcohol in dry areas.
The law does have several stringent requirements: A business must be licensed as a nonprofit by the secretary of state’s office; it must have held that license for at least a year; it must pay $3,000 for the permit and $1,500 for annual renewal; and it must maintain a list of at least 100 members.
Fletcher said the strict requirements were part of the reason the city lost out on a Buffalo Wild Wings. The restaurant was interested in locating near Little Rock Air Force Base, the mayor said, but ultimately landed in Sherwood, just outside the Gray Township boundary.
“That’s a a good example of a restaurant that was interested in what the community had to offer but was not interested in going through hoops and expenses” of becoming a private club, Fletcher said.
Farther up U.S. 67/167, Jacksonville’s economic development team lured a Fuzzy’s Taco Shop to locate along John Harden Drive.
After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on building renovations, franchise co-owner Mark Needler applied for a private club license through Alcoholic Beverage Control but was denied after a nearby church protested the restaurant’s application.
Pastor Ted Patterson of Jacksonville Baptist Temple argued that the owner was targeting high school students to work in the restaurant and that he didn’t believe police could prevent the sale of alcohol to minors in such an establishment, according to state documents.
“I respect the decision of the fathers of our city who had the wisdom and the insight to reject the sale of alcohol within our city limits,” Patterson wrote last year in a letter to Alcoholic Beverage Control Director Bud Roberts. “It would show a lack of wisdom on my part to stand idly by and not oppose the petition for a liquor license, even if the granting of such is disguised as a club.”
Roberts rejected the restaurant’s application. Needler appealed that decision to the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, and the board reversed Roberts’ decision and granted the restaurant its private club designation.
Attempts to reach Patterson for this story were unsuccessful.
Prior to the recently passed legislation that allows city councils to call special elections, state law required petitioners to gather signatures from 15 percent of the electorate in order to trigger an election for on-premise, by-thedrink consumption.
Efforts to collect such an “absurd number” of signatures — as Williams called it — had failed in Sherwood and Jacksonville.
In 2015, an effort to get the issue on the ballot in Jacksonville fell short by 1,400 signatures. An effort by Sherwood in 2013 fell short by about half the required number, according to City Attorney Steve Cobb.
City officials said they never encountered any opposition groups during those efforts, and no one the Democrat-Gazette spoke with for this article has encountered any organized opposition to the current effort to allow alcohol sales in the township.
Minister Jodie Carter of the Church of Christ in Jacksonville said that because wet areas are so accessible to people living in the Gray Township, changing the laws shouldn’t be a big concern.
“Now that Jacksonville has their own school system, they’re going to need every bit of revenue they can muster,” Carter said. “It’s not so much of a religious or political thing. I’m a minister for the Church of Christ. Jesus didn’t do a campaign against drinking liquor. He just said don’t drink too much and go on about your business.”
Fletcher and Sherwood Mayor Virginia Young said they believe now is the best opportunity proponents have had to bring the issue before voters, and Johnson predicts voters will pass it decisively.
“I look for a real favorable vote,” Johnson said.
Two other dry voting districts — Precinct 614 just north of Jacksonville and Union Township just southeast of Little Rock — remain in Pulaski County. Another remains in Garland County, in a small section of Hot Springs.
Those areas are residential and sparsely populated, Johnson said, and have never generated any strong interest in changing alcohol laws.