I got a call yesterday from someone in city government who told me that quite a few restaurant owners in Fort Wayne are not very happy right now.
First, they get hit with the county's proposed anti-smoking measure; it's a lot tougher than the existing Fort Wayne ordinance, so if it passed and the city took no action, the county ordinance would take effect, meaning restaurants that shelled out big bucks for enclosed smoking areas have wasted their money. Now, they're being treated to a riverfront development proposal that would let new restaurants in the designated area get new liquor licenses for peanuts instead of the $50,000 to $100,000 existing restaurants have had to shell out for licenses.
"They feel like they're being targeted for everything," my caller said.
I doubt restaurant owners would organize and do anything drastic like boycotting the city for a week, although that might be interesting to see ("Do all your own cooking for a week and see how you like it!"). But I wouldn't be surprised if a restaurant owner or two just threw in the towel.
Comments
Well if it's inevitable that some do throw in the towel, then I hope it's limited to the franchise restaurants that we're saturated with...
This might be an interesting story for one of the newspapers to cover. Perhaps contact the business broker who spoke at the County Commissioners meeting, claiming that the restaurant/tavern business is already in the tank. Maybe compare cost of current liquor license with cost of a new special district license.
But that would require asking questions and writing a story. Once you start down that road.... Who knows, someone might expect an update on the jail investigation into the recent suicide, the alleged fraud at Neighborhood Housing Partnership, why the location of the proposed hotel kept flip-flopping, the "secret" location for the proposed baseball arena, etc.
Nope, better to just print the press release about the new receptionist at xyz corp. Much easier, no ruffled feathers.
What is the real force behind the scenes? Who are the people who are really going to potentially benefit from all this downtown push? Dirt cheap liquor licenses are going to make it a lot easier to compete.