Comments on: Liquor Committee: Two Hearings on Licenses

By: teacherpatti

teacherpatti — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 19:51:19 +0000

I hope the Elks Club can figure out a way to keep up the very fun events that they have at their place. Has anyone ever gone? Total blast. No craft beer though, but I can overlook that for the most excellent soul food plate for $10 :)

By: Jim Rees

Jim Rees — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:08:40 +0000

A pdf of a printout of a poor scan of a screenshot? Seriously? Why didn’t they just send you a paper tape, at least that would be machine readable. Wasn’t Snyder supposed to be an IT guy?

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 20:26:50 +0000

MLCC doesn't have a single code used for "on-premise" but sent along screen shots from the database code descriptors, which provide a little more insight. OD-SERV, for example, is "outdoor service." [.pdf of data base screen shots with longer versions of the abbreviated codes with partial descriptions] (The quality of the text and the large amount of gray made OCR balk and I have not had time to convert by hand.)

By: Joel Goldberg

Joel Goldberg — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:14:25 +0000

I don’t have (and couldn’t find online) a decoder, either; it might take a call to the MLCC. Jim looks correct that OD-SERV seems to be one of the codes for “on-premise” service. But other codes show up at other places that serve alcohol, like “ON PREM SEATING, DIR-CON – 3″. It looks like there’s no single key that designates all on-premise servers.

As an aside, this is one way the state wrings extra fees from alcohol-related businesses. Everything requires additional licenses that cost extra: selling on Sunday, selling on Sunday morning, allowing music or dancing on the premises, allowing beer or wine tasting, allowing on-premise licensees to sell bottles for off-premise consumption, etc.

Think of the LCC as the Spirit Airlines of regulatory agencies.

By: Jim Rees

Jim Rees — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:45:09 +0000

One of the last fields seems to give the license class, and “OD-SERV” seems to be the code for on-premise consumption. But I can’t find a magic decoder ring on the michigan.gov web site.

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:41:09 +0000

Re: on-premise versus other license

Good point, Joel. I did not notice any of the fields in the data file that seemed to correspond to category of license. Would you mind having a look to see if you recognize something obvious that could be used to code the difference?

By: Joel Goldberg

Joel Goldberg — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:08:42 +0000

Dave, thanks for the valuable map to the nearest place to buy hooch.

It’s worth a mention that the MLCC data file used to create the map includes all types of alcoholic beverage license granted by the state, not just the licenses for on-premise consumption discussed in the article. So you’ll also find everything from the Beer Depot to Meijer on the map.

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:45:01 +0000

The outcome of the Dream affair will probably be that after interminable grinding the owners, city council and MLCC will negotiate a settlement. Dream will close and the on premise license will transfer to new “clean” owners. After a coat of paint and name change a new operation will start and will be pretty much like the old one: big rowdy crowds, overserving, underage serving (especially of girls), fights, code violations, toleration of drug use and selling and buying of liquor in Chicago.
The change will probably include a bankruptcy by the old owners with creditors getting stiffed for a few hundred K and staff losing pay.
When the dust settles if anyone cares to look carefully they will probably find the “new” owners are cousins of the old ones…..

By: Dave Askins

Dave Askins — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 20:43:53 +0000

Re: [2] map of liquor license locations The Michigan Liquor License Control Commission has a useful page with a link to a "clickable map." As promising as that sounds, clicking on Washtenaw County just links to a comma-separated-value file with all the information. Still, that made it fairly easy to geocode and upload to geocommons: "Map of Washtenaw Liquor License Locations, March 3, 2012."

By: Jim Rees

Jim Rees — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:44:04 +0000

Yes, thank you for the coverage.

Do you know if there is a map somewhere showing the locations of all the businesses in the City with liquor licenses?