[Winona Online Democracy]
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This article from StarTribune.com
has been sent to you by Craig Brooks. *Please note, the sender's identity has not been verified. The full article, with any associated images and links can be viewed here. Craig Brooks wrote these comments: I wonder if what Madison is considering should be thought about for Winona, (and LaCrosse for that matter). |
| Does excess alcohol put the 'mad' in Madison? Susan Saulny, New York Times MADISON, WIS. - This college town received what it wanted when, during the 1980s and '90s, it sought to reverse the decline of its downtown and to fashion a more vibrant civic center that would draw people at night and on weekends. Since then, thousands of young professionals, retirees and former suburbanites have relocated to glistening condominium buildings in the shadow of the State Capitol's dome and only a few blocks from the University of Wisconsin's main campus. And there is hardly a bad night for business near Main Street, where university students and tourists pack restaurants and! bars to capacity even on freezing weeknights, whooping it up over brats and beer. But as downtown's population and revelry have grown, so have crowding on the streets, vandalism and, most significant, the police say, alcohol-related crime. Now Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and other officials find themselves grappling with an unexpected problem that is a direct result of Madison's successful transformation: how to scale down downtown. As an urban issue, the downsizing of downtowns has little precedent because many cities, particularly in the Midwest, are struggling mightily to bring people back to their cores, not send them away. Of course, many college towns deal with problems related to drinking. In the Midwest alone, La Crosse, Wis., and East Lansing and Ann Arbor, Mich., are struggling with how to cope with the public mayhem often fueled by inebriated students. In Madison, two Common Council members, convinced that much of what ails downtown! can be traced to the proliferation of bars and restaurants kn! own more for drinking than dining, introduced a plan intended to reduce the number of bars and restaurants that serve alcohol and to restrict the approval of new liquor licenses. The plan, which has the mayor's support, is preliminary and does not detail, for example, how many or which establishments may be closed. Those issues will be the subjects of debate through the winter, with a final plan expected to be ready for a council vote in the spring. "We're trying to get a hold of an important question," the mayor said in an interview. "How many bars in one area is a good thing?" That area of nearly a square mile -- between Lake Mendota, Lake Monona and Blair and Lake streets -- has 120 establishments that serve only alcohol or more alcohol than food. They have a capacity of more than 11,000 people, city officials said. The proposal also has its critics, many of whom denounce it as nothing less than modern-day Prohibition and an assault on personal! freedom and the free market that flies in the face of Madison's traditional liberalism and Wisconsin's entrenched drinking culture. Some council members say they worry that limiting the number of bars will only increase the number of drinkers who turn to house parties and makeshift taverns, where binge drinking and bad behavior often go hand in hand, but behind closed doors. "A lot of the activists on this issue revile alcohol, and their logic is equally fallacious as the original Prohibitionists,' " said Austin King, the president of the Common Council and a member of its Progressive caucus. "From a safety perspective," King said, "I would much, much rather have young people drinking in the regulated environment of bars." College students, not surprisingly, also oppose the plan. "A proportion of students drink irresponsibly, but the majority don't," said Katrina Schleitwiler, 21, a political science major at the University of Wisconsin. "This wo! uld just drive students into other places to drink and not aff! ect the problem at all." Although Schleitwiler acknowledged a recent spate of crimes around campus and downtown, she said she did not think that alcohol abuse by students or anyone else was at its root. "Madison is becoming a big city with more crime," she said. "How different is that from any other city?" The police see things differently. According to a recent Police Department analysis of attacks in which someone was injured downtown, about 75 percent of the victims and perpetrators were intoxicated. The analysis also found that after midnight on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, police officers, paramedics and firefighters routinely spent half to all of their working hours responding to alcohol-fueled fights and disorderly conduct. Noise, public urination and vandalism are also constant concerns. |
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