What is going on with the beer around hear?
Posted by: Noël Jones
By now you may have heard the sad news that the Victory Brew Pub deal has fallen through, according to an article by Christopher Baxter of The Morning Call. You might have also heard that Wegman's one a lawsuit over whether or not they have the right in PA to sell beer in the restaurants in their stores--this news comes to us in a article by Peter Jackson of the Associated Press. What's most interesting, and confusing to me though, is that in the AP article Jackson reports that our new Governor-Elect, Tom Corbett, has a plan to sell the PA State Liquor Control Board to private operators!
First of all, I didn't know that you could even do that--sell a government agency. Isn't that kind of like selling the Dept. of Education? Strange. Secondly, I wonder if by "private operators" he means letting mom & pop operations open their own liquor store in PA the way they operate in Jersey, or whether it would be sold in one big lump to one big investor who would then control our alcohol?
If anybody knows more details on this than were printed in this article, please post a comment!
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6 comments:
mmmm...beer.
I hear the brew pub is not dead just at the Weller Center
Hopefully that's true! I was really hoping that deal would go through (first at the Pomeroy Bldg, then at the Weller Center) because it would bring more lively night business to the circle and make our downtown safer and more inviting at night.
When I lived in Portland, OR--the little historic district downtown--Pioneer Square--was almost all restaurants, cafes and pubs, and it drew hundreds of people each night because it was pretty and everything was in walking distance of everything else. It was vibrant and alive and felt totally safe because so many people were out and about--I would really like to see that happen for our downtown--I think it's starting to, slowly. I would love to see more restaurants and pubs with cafe tables on the sidewalks in the summer.
You never know...they may bounce back across the street to Pomeroy's again. Losing the Farmhouse Restaurant backing certainly hurts their core capability to run the place. They will need to regroup with new people. It is to their credit they held on this long considering the way they were treated by that idiot Lou Pektor when he owned Pomeroy's. I hope they stick it out and give it one my try. We'll get this town back together sooner or later. I'd like them to be part of it.
DRL
The state government ought to get out of the business of selling alcohol, if only - and this is certainly NOT the only reason - it has an inherent conflict of interest in being both the sole sales source of spirits, and the enforcer of the laws regarding intoxication.
Interesting point, Ken. I hadn't thought about it that way--I just think it's weird in general for a state to control alcohol sales.
I remember being in Utah, and they control their liquor sales there as well--funny since it's a Mormon state, and Mormons think it's a sin to drink alcohol. Even funnier that they had a really high tax on alcohol--there must have been a conversation at some point among the powers-that-be there--as to whether to outlaw it on principal--or let the sinners sin and extract a big tax from them...all that revenue...
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