The Tidewater News - August 14, 2023

Up to about 1891, Franklin was a typical “wet” town. Going back in time to the mid 1830s, when Franklin was first established as a village, liquor manufacture, distribution and consumption was not controlled. However, starting in the latter part of the 1800s, it was controlled to some extent through Southampton County licensing of establishments. In 1891, though, the citizens of Franklin, led by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the churches, petitioned Judge Barrett of the Southampton County Court to refuse liquor licenses for Franklin, which petition was granted. As a “no-liquor” town, Franklin was a failure and it returned to its previous ways — blatant production, distribution, and consumption. Liquor was being brought in weekly by the buckboard-load and every known “wet person” knew where in town he could get all the liquor he wanted.   In 1892, after the no-license system had been in effect for a year, a local option election was held — whether to re-establish licensing of alcohol. The “wets” won by one vote. A prominent worker for the “dry” cause was Rev. C. C. Werenbaker, pastor of the Methodist Church; but he, having failed to register, could not vote. Had he been in a position to vote, there would have been a tie; and it was generally thought that Judge Barrett would have decided in favor of the “dry” element. Illogically, though, had the “drys” won, alcohol production and use, would have still existed – but illegally!   So, local licensing of establishments to legally dispense alcohol was reinstituted and this system was in place right up to the early 1900s. Around about that time, the Commonwealth of Virginia, following the lead of other states, especially South Carolina, decided to consider STATE-controlled liquor STORES. So, for the first time the Commonwealth of Virginia got involved with the liquor business. 

And, for whatever reason, Franklin was chosen as the first Virginia location, in 1902, of what was called a dispensary. It was located in a building on First Avenue, right next to the alley that ran behind the stores that faced Main Street. Later, the dispensary building was used for other purposes – including William Branch’s first shoe repair store.   The Franklin Dispensary was managed by three commissioners, some of Franklin’s most prominent and best citizens: Cecil C. Vaughan Sr., R. S. Fagan, and John C. Parker Sr. Mr. Fagan was designated as the purchasing agent for the dispensary. The profits from liquor sales were divided as follows: three-eighths to the Town of Franklin, three-eighths to the District, and two-eighths to the State. From the profits received by the town were built concrete sidewalks on Main, High and Clay streets and First, Second and Fourth avenues. Some of the residents were at first loath to use the sidewalks, claiming they had been built with “blood money”. And, the fine and grand Franklin Elementary School, built in 1905 and located at 516 West Second Avenue, was made possible through funds derived from the dispensary. Many people were especially upset by the fact that the education of the town’s children was being accomplished through the sale of evil spirits.   All along, the Southampton County WCTU was vehemently opposed to and disdained alcohol in general; and, in particular, the presence of the liquor dispensary in the community. The public outcry against any official town connection with alcohol became so great that, in 1907, the Franklin Dispensary authorization was abolished. Franklin was the first town in the state to have a state-controlled liquor store and was the first town to abolish it. After the abolishment, there was very little control of alcohol, at any level, for many years.   

​All the foregoing, of course, was much before the national institution of prohibition. The 18th Amendment of the United States Constitution (to establish prohibition), as of Jan. 16, 1919, was ratified by two-thirds of the states and was effective Jan. 17, 1920. However, actual enforcement of the legislation was slow in coming about. In some cases, for an extended period of time, enforcement was non-existent in some areas of the country.   Although prohibition was established and was supported by many people, in actuality, millions of Americans were STILL drinking alcoholic beverages. Because the law did not specifically outlaw consumption, many people stockpiled alcohol and figured out ways to obtain it. This gave rise to bootlegging (illegal production, sale, and distribution) and “speakeasies” (illegal and secret drinking establishments) which were capitalized upon by organized crime. Gangsterism and turf battles between criminal gangs were prevalent.  In the long run, it became obvious that prohibition had caused far more problems than it had solved. Of much concern, was the increase in criminal activity, public corruption, and, in general, a prevalent casual disregard of law. An organization called “Women’s Organization for National Prohibition Reform” was at the forefront of the movement to REPEAL the prohibition law. 

As of Dec. 5, 1933, the 21st amendment (to repeal prohibition) of the United States Constitution was ratified by two-thirds of the states — which automatically and officially repealed the 18th amendment of the United States Constitution (the establishment of prohibition). Virginia Governor John Pollard called the General Assembly into special session — to legalize 3.2 % alcoholic beverages.   On March 22, 1934, the Virginia General Assembly voted to adopt a liquor control plan – and created the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. And, even though the Virginia ABC system was establishing stores in communities across the state, Franklin did not have an ABC store until 1950; before that, people from this area had to go to Suffolk to purchase legal liquor.  CLYDE PARKER is a retired human resources manager for the former Franklin Equipment Co. and a member of the Southampton County Historical Society. His email address is magnolia101@charter.net.

News Release Contact:Virginia ABC Communications - (804) 213-4413 
Email: pubrel@virginiaABC.com
Starting Friday, July 1, five laws impacting the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority (ABC), its licensees and applicants for ABC licenses will take effect. The Virginia General Assembly passed the following Virginia ABC-related legislative proposals during the 2022 session, and Governor Glenn Youngkin signed them into law.

Third-Party Delivery License/Cocktails To-Go (HB 426 and SB 254) – Both bills create a third-party delivery license which will be necessary to deliver alcoholic beverages purchased by consumers from retail licensees. Created to address safety issues including age verification and food requirements, the new license requires delivery personnel to pass an alcohol delivery safety and responsibility course and certify their compliance with the regulations annually. In addition, the bills extend from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2024, the sunset of prior legislation that allowed certain licensees to sell mixed beverages for off-premises consumption.

Alcohol Licenses for Casinos (HB 455 and SB 519) – Both bills create a new mixed beverage casino license for the sale of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption in areas designated by ABC during all hours of operation. It also authorizes the licensee to provide gifts of alcoholic beverages to patrons and establish loyalty or reward credit programs under certain conditions.

Funding for Virginia Distilleries to Market their Products (HB 20 and SB 196) – Both bills allocate from the General Fund an amount equal to 20% of the 20% tax levied on the sale of Virginia-distilled spirits to the Virginia Spirits Promotion Fund.

Bringing Alcohol from Out of State (SB 325) – This law increases the amount of alcoholic beverages that a person may transport into the commonwealth from one gallon to three gallons.

Removing Sunset Clause for the Sale of Grain Alcohol (SB 527) – This bill removes the sunset clause from the authorization for the sale of neutral grain spirits or alcohol up to a proof limit of 151 in ABC stores

June 09, 2022 News Release
Contact:Virginia ABC Communications - (804) 213-4413 
Email: pubrel@virginiaABC.com
New ABC License Effective July 1 Looks to Ensure a Safe Means for Alcoholic Beverage Delivery
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A new license designed to ensure a safe and secure way for licensed businesses to deliver alcoholic beverages will take effect on July 1. The new third-party delivery license, which was part of legislation passed by Virginia’s General Assembly and signed into law by Governor Youngkin earlier this year, requires delivery personnel to pass an alcohol delivery safety and responsibility training course.

Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority’s (ABC) Education and Prevention team has created the Responsible Alcoholic Delivery Driver (RADD) online public safety course, which is offered at no charge for licensees and businesses seeking a third-party delivery license. The course includes a pretraining survey, four training modules and a success survey. Training topics include alcoholic beverage delivery strategies to prevent underage sales and promote responsible consumption.

The third-party delivery license is the result of a stakeholder study group that met during the summer of 2021 to address safety concerns about the new alcohol delivery service. Representatives from food and beverage delivery businesses; alcoholic beverage manufacturing, retail and wholesale companies; and restaurant and hospitality industries; as well as Virginia ABC leadership contributed to the collaborative effort to create the license designed to protect public safety and health. 

As part of the study, representatives from third-party delivery services participated in a workgroup to create a licensing structure for Virginia. The group brought experiences from other states and industry best practices, which were significant in the creation of the license.

“Virginia ABC was most appreciative of the earnest and candid input from the approximately 40 stakeholders in this group,” said Virginia ABC CEO Travis Hill. “We were pleased that state lawmakers took the two-pronged approach of continuing the cocktail to go privilege while also creating the license for third-party delivery entities to better assure safe and lawful delivery of alcohol. In the ensuing years, ABC will continue to monitor delivery of alcohol to determine if further policy changes are required.”

The new third-party delivery license, which addresses issues including age verification and food requirements, stipulates that licensees annually certify their compliance with the new regulations, including delivery personnel’s completion of the training course. 

Seller Training Approval Program (STAP) for alcohol delivery personnel trainings developed by entities other than Virginia ABC are also accepted for certification. Virginia ABC's certification of delivery driver public safety trainings started June 1 and will continue through July 15, 2022. The application form, training criteria and submittal instructions are available on ABC’s website. For more information about these trainings, contact ABC Education and Prevention at education@virginiaabc.com or 804-977-7440.

More information about the third-party license requirements is available on Virginia ABC’s website.
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Source:  Cardinal News- Megan Schnabel
November 30, 2021


Danville and Abingdon are among the first localities in the state to consider a so-called Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area license.

When Lee Vogler stands in the middle of Danville’s River District and looks around, he sees a growing entertainment and cultural hub: restaurants, a brewery, apartments, music venues.

When he imagines the River District a year from now, he sees an addition to that scene: happy visitors wandering the sidewalks with beers or cocktails in their hands.

“More and more, folks are ready to see Danville kind of step into this next phase of its history, becoming a tourist destination, a place where folks can have a nice night out, and have entertainment,” said Vogler, a member of the Danville City Council. “We just feel that this is another step in that direction.”

Vogler is helping to spearhead the city’s effort to obtain a new ABC license that would allow it to create permanent open-air zones where alcoholic beverages can be consumed on the street, and even taken into stores.

Danville, Abingdon and Charlottesville are among the first localities in Virginia to consider a DORA license – that stands for Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area – since the law creating it took effect July 1. About a dozen other localities have received licenses that allow similar zones to be created for specific events.

DORAs are different from festival beer gardens, where trucks usually provide the brews and drinkers must stay within a fenced area. A DORA, by contrast, could span multiple blocks – even a whole downtown – and patrons would buy drinks from ABC-licensed restaurants in the zone and then carry them as they browse nearby merchants.

Vogler sees it as a logical continuation of Danville’s efforts to reinvigorate itself, a process that has been underway for years with the renovation of vacant downtown buildings into residential and commercial spaces but last year got a very public jolt when more than two-thirds of Danville voters voted to allow a casino to be built in the city. Caesars Virginia is slated to open in 2023 with 500 rooms, plus tens of thousands of square feet of meeting and convention space. 

“The message that we continue to receive from our citizens in general is ‘We want more’ – more entertainment, more music, more nightlife,” Vogler said. “And so we are trying to meet that demand.”

For its first DORA, the city is targeting the River District, which Vogler describes as a “gathering hub of activity.” It’s a walkable area that’s home to a high concentration of businesses that could benefit from added visitors, he said.

“I view this as something that ties in with entertainment and culture, this communal kind of atmosphere,” he said. “Our River District, that’s what that is for us … so it seemed like the logical place for the first one.”
***
A handful of other states have created similar licensing options.

Ohio, for instance, which approved its first DORA in 2015, now has 81 of the zones – including 32 created just last year – according to a July story in the Dayton Daily News. 
Michigan approved the creation of so-called “social districts” last year; as of this summer, there were 40 across the state, according to a story in MLive, a statewide news site.

While tourist meccas like Bourbon Street or the Las Vegas Strip get most of the publicity surrounding public drinking, local DORA backers will be quick to tell you that they don’t want to be like those places. Even if they did have neon aspirations, they would be unlikely to ever achieve that kind of atmosphere.

“I don’t think the results would be some sort of unmanageable chaos,” said Doug Plachcinski, Danville’s director of planning. “We’re just not that rowdy. Even our existing live music – everything closes up at 10 o’clock.”

Doug Beatty, the driving force behind a petition seeking a DORA that would encompass about six blocks of Abingdon’s Main Street, said he’s heard the concerns in his town but thinks it’s “much ado about nothing.”

“Abingdon will never be downtown New Orleans or the French Quarter. It’ll never be Savannah. We’re just not that,” said Beatty, who owns Bonfire Smokehouse in Abingdon’s historic downtown.

Beatty said he’s learned from his decades in the restaurant business, both in Abingdon and in Asheville, North Carolina, that putting “feet on the street” is a key to a thriving downtown, and he believes that a DORA would help create the right kind of atmosphere to attract more people to Abingdon’s historic district.

Tonya Triplett, the Abingdon’s director of economic development and tourism, said the grassroots effort has prompted a lot of discussion in town, and some fears about noise and drunkenness.

“It’s an education process,” she said. “When I was first hearing about it, I thought, My goodness, this is going to be like Bourbon Street. And that definitely is not something that we are interested in.”

But the town has been looking at how other states have implemented DORAs, she said, and they’ve seen reports from other towns that haven’t seem to have had any problems.

One idea they’ve been talking about would be to start small – to create the first DORA just in the farmers market area, and then expand it later if it’s successful.

Town officials are considering logistical questions as well: How does the sanitation department deal with the increased trash that would be produced, since each to-go beverage must be in a disposable plastic cup? What if there are merchants who don’t want to participate – do they need special signage? 

“This council is very conscious about making sure we balance the tourism experience with the citizens who live here,” Triplett said.

“We want to just make sure that we’re crossing all of our t’s and dotting all of our i’s, and that we’ve heard all of the concerns.”

While it might be easier to obtain the more limited version of a license – the kind that allows open-air alcohol zones during certain events – Beatty said he’s committed to pushing for a permanent DORA. 

“We don’t want to have certain days of the week or really weird hours on certain days – none of that,” he said. “We need to make this simple and consistent and easy to follow.”
***

No one in Virginia has received a full DORA license yet, but more than a dozen localities or nonprofits have obtained a more limited version that’s similar to the old local special events license and allows for the creation of a time-limited refreshment area for a festival or other event.

That’s the route Downtown Roanoke Inc. took. The nonprofit successfully applied for a DORA license that allows it to create outdoor beverage zones for up to 16 events over the course of the year. The impetus was last month’s GO Fest, which moved downtown for the first time in its history.

The outdoors-focused festival, which ran for three days, in years past had always been held at River’s Edge Park, with beer gardens served by trucks. But when organizers decided to move it downtown, it made sense to work with nearby restaurants instead of bringing in beer trucks to compete with them, said Jaime Clark, vice president of marketing and communications for DRI.

The desire to give a boost to local restaurants, which have been pummelled by the pandemic, has been a driving factor for at least some of the DORA licensees, including Tazewell Today, a nonprofit that handles event planning for the town of Tazewell.

In the past, Tazewell Today would get a banquet license and bring in a beer truck for its First Fridays series, said Emily Combs Davis, a member of the Tazewell Town Council who’s also on the board of Tazewell Today.

“That was nice, but we now have restaurants on Main Street that we want to support,” Davis said. “We’re bringing all of these people to Main Street, but if we have a beer truck, we are competing with the restaurants for the business, and that’s not really what we want to do. We want to encourage the economic activity to the restaurants.”

Julia Boas, director of marketing for the Roanoke Regional Partnership and an organizer of GO Fest, said she could see the appeal of creating a permanent DORA, especially if Roanoke were to close off the city market area to traffic – an idea that has periodically surfaced over the years. 

She wondered, though, how it would work logistically.

For GO Fest, extra security personnel were hired to patrol the edges of the refreshment area to make sure no one came into or left the zone with alcohol. How would that work with a permanent DORA? she wondered. 

“You’d just have to trust people, I guess,” she said. “There could be a serious learning curve of people taking their alcohol wherever.”

She paused, then said: “Then again, people could, in theory, take beers out in the streets whenever they wanted, but they don’t do it. People are like, ‘Everybody’s going to go insane and lose their minds because you let them take a beer out.’ People could always walk around with alcohol and you would never know. They don’t do it. It’s not the societal norm, so we don’t do it.”
***
In Danville, city leaders haven’t publicized the DORA push yet, but Vogler and Plachcinski both said the feedback they’ve received has been positive.

Rick Barker, who owns two restaurants in the River District, Mucho Taqueria and The Garage, said he hadn’t heard of the DORA plans but liked the idea. 

“Generally, we would be supportive of that, because it promotes a relaxed, casual, somewhat festival atmosphere,” Barker said. “It’s entertainment-friendly, and for that reason we would be supportive.”

Pre-COVID, Mucho would host occasional block parties. The city would close the street, and patrons could wander with their drinks within the limited area. 

“Customers love it,” he said. “It’s like one block out of Bourbon.” 

Diana Schwartz, executive director of the River District Association, said she believes that a DORA would be one more amenity that would encourage people to visit Danville’s downtown, and she thinks that it fits in with the city’s other tourism and economic development initiatives, like the casino.

“You have some very forward thinking folks here in Danville,” she said. “They understand there’s risk involved whenever you’re trying to do something to move your community forward, but thankfully they’re very very smart, and it’s calculated risk, and it’s educated risk, and so far it has certainly paid off.”

Plachcinski’s office is working through the logistics of a DORA plan, including what the boundaries should be. A public safety plan will have to be developed, and the city will need to figure out what entity should hold the license. Eventually, the city council will have to vote on the proposal.

Danville is already eyeing two other potential DORA sites: North Main commercial area, across the river from downtown, and the area around the casino project, called Schoolfield.

“Initially the first effort is to support our existing and growing businesses,” Plachcinski said. “After that, we hope to use the tool more as kind of direct economic incentive, to stimulate actual growth and business creation.”

Source Virginia Business - Robyn Sidersky

​Starting July 1, the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority (ABC) will begin enforcing new laws passed by the Virginia General Assembly during its 2021 session, including allowing localities to create special large outdoor entertainment districts where consumption of alcohol would be allowed.

Other measures passed by the Assembly include allowing restaurants to continue selling cocktails to go, a holdover from the pandemic. Virginia ABC is conducting a study ordered by the General Assembly on the issue of allowing long-term continuance of to-go alcoholic mixed drinks. More than 40 stakeholders are participating in the study.

Another bill will allow wine and beer to continue to be delivered without a delivery permit until Jan.1, 2022.
Nonprofit groups will be allowed to conduct virtual fundraising events, including the sale and shipment of wine in closed containers.

Two bills authorize the ABC, after the adoption of a local ordinance, to work with localities to create areas where consumption of alcohol will be allowed in areas such as entertainment or walking districts. In these locations, the frequency and duration of special events will be able to be increased under “designated outdoor refreshment area” licenses. Patrons will be allowed to consume drinks outside the establishments within the designated outdoor area, which could consist of several blocks.

Beginning Jan. 1, the ABC will stop selling low-alcohol beverages (spirits-based drinks that are 7.5% or less of alcohol by volume) in its stores, unless manufactured by a Virginia distillery.
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The General Assembly also passed a bill that a local county or city attorney, commonwealth’s attorney and the attorney general can take enforcement actions against unlawful games of skill. This legislation comes after Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania banned skill machines from the city in 2019, which resulted in a lawsuit from Queen of Virginia, the machines’ operator, that was ultimately dropped.