Anti-Social. Most Speakers At City Council Meeting Oppose Downtown “Social District”

The district, which would allow regulated open containers of alcohol in part of downtown, could foster economic growth, speakers said -- or lots of alcohol-related problems.

Kyle Williams, owner of Brevard Brewing Co. on East Main Street, pictured last year. He said concerns about the creation of a Social District are exaggerated.

BREVARD — The drinking culture in Brevard is “very tame,” Kyle Williams, owner of Brevard Brewing Co., told City Council members Monday night.

The customers at his brew pub on East Main Street include workers who drink a beer or two on their way home and tourists who stop in before “shopping with their kids,” he said.

“In eleven-and-a-half years in business, I can count the number of negative instances in my bar on one hand. They just don’t happen,” Williams said.

And if the Council decides to create a Social District — six blocks of downtown where the regulated carrying of open containers of alcohol would be allowed — “none of that would change,” he said.

“This is not a frat town. People are not going to be tearing their shirts off and getting into fights . . . The sky is not falling.”

But Emily Lowery, executive director of The Haven homeless shelter, asked Council members to put themselves in the shoes of people who had lost jobs, housing and custody of their children because of substance abuse.

Imagine, she said, that they had recently committed to recovery and faced a walk through the district from a job at Ingles Market to The Haven, which requires guests to remain sober.

With the smells and sights of drinking “in your face,” she said, such a person could easily be tempted to “just have one . . . Well, one becomes two, two becomes three, three becomes, who knows.”

“I don’t know if you have thought about that perspective, but that could be a real story from the world that I live in,” she said.

Williams and Lowery were two of the more than two dozen speakers from the meeting’s overflow crowd who spoke about the issue Monday.

Council won’t vote on whether to create the district until a later meeting, likely on Aug. 21. 

On Monday, it just set aside time to hear residents’ thoughts about the city’s creation of a district, as at least 40 North Carolina cities have done since the state allowed the establishment of such zones in 2021.

Most speakers, by far, joined Lowery in opposing the idea or at least raising concerns about it. These included two program coordinators of the anti-substance abuse organization, the CARE Coalition of Transylvania County.

One of these coordinators, Jermois Morris, highlighted the extensive public health damage of excessive and under-age alcohol consumption and the relatively recent passage of the state law allowing social districts.

“We don’t yet have solid data on the long-term impacts of policies like these,” he said. 

His colleague Celia Richmond focused on possible changes to the proposal that could reduce the risk of minors being exposed to alcohol or its misuse by adults.

These included restricting the drinks allowed under the proposed ordinance to beer and wine, and continuing to prohibit open containers of hard liquor. Richmond also suggested limiting the district’s hours — now proposed to extend between 11 am and 10 pm daily — to evenings or weekends.

Many other speakers raised concerns that Williams tried to address, including the prospect of fights between drunk pedestrians, and public intoxication and urination.

Such potential problems were also addressed in documents provided to the Council, which, in addition, said the proposal had been extensively discussed by the Council’s Public Safety Committee, which unanimously recommended its passage in June.

Brevard Police Chief Tom Jordan, in researching the impact of such districts, received responses from 22 local governments. None, he wrote in a report included in the meeting packet, had found that these zones had contributed to a significant increase in crime.

A city of Raleigh survey about its own zone showed “stong support for the social district, with stakeholders reporting increased sales, no increase in litter, and no increase in ‘bad behavior’ in the area,” the agenda packet said.

Businesses in the proposed zone — covering blocks on either side of Main between England and Gaston streets — would not be required to participate in the program. Enterprises that do not sell alcohol could post city-generated window signs saying that beverages are either allowed or prohibited.

Businesses in the district that want to sell alcohol for outside consumption must receive a permit from the city and serve the drinks in clearly labeled non-glass cups.

For restaurants that already have outdoor dining permits, the creation of the district would allow patrons to carry drinks beyond their designated dining areas and eliminate barriers and signs currently required to control this practice.

The same would be true for organizers of downtown events who have obtained permits to serve alcohol.

“It would mean they wouldn’t have to put up those barricades or signs that say, ‘No alcohol beyond this point,’ ” said Senior Planner Emily Brewer.

The district would be “a way for community members and patrons to use the publicly available spaces, the new tables that are on Main Street and at Clemson Plaza . . . to be able to sit and spend time outside,” she said.

Parents, for example, could buy beers for themselves and ice cream for their children, and then repair to one of these gathering spots before continuing to explore downtown, Brewer said.

“The idea is that it would create opportunities for the cross pollination of businesses,” she said.

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