On Feb. 24, the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) is set to hold a hearing to receive public comment on the Georgetown Liquor License Moratorium. The moratorium zone, put into effect in 1989, when Georgetown was famous for its bars, limited the number of liquor licenses available in the neighborhood. The Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2E, Georgetown Business Improvement District (BID), and Citizens Association of Georgetown (CAG) each voted separately by December 2015 to not extend the moratorium. The ABRA must approve the April 9 expiration of the regulation, which would allow the Alcoholic Beverage Commission to issue new liquor licenses in the neighborhood for the first time since 1989.
The moratorium can be traced to a city-wide crackdown on liquor in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Because of it’s relatively lower drinking age for wine and beer, the District had become a magnet for 18-20 year olds looking to party. “The flavor of Georgetown is the nightlife of Georgetown,” Chris McLaughlin (COL ’95), a GUSA representative, told the Voice in 1994. Residents of the neighborhood and the city were less than pleased. “There is a perception in the [ANC] that Georgetown students drink too much,” said ANC Commissioner Ted Jacobs, in the same year. The District finally raised its legal drinking age from 18, where it had been since 1933, to 21 in September of 1986. This was four years after Maryland had done the same. The license moratorium was soon to follow.
The moratorium zone in Georgetown, instituted in 1989, is the oldest of five similar neighborhood zones in Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, and Glover Park. The moratorium zones and the creation of a downtown “nightclub area” were meant to “relieve the pressures on Georgetown and other trendy communities, where late-night drinking has become increasingly bacchanal,” as James P. McGrath wrote in a Georgetown Current op-ed in 1994.
The regulation was made stricter by John Ray, D.C. Councilmember-at-large, in 1993. At the time, Georgetown had eleven licensed taverns and one licensed nightclub, the River Club. New regulation would limit tavern licenses to six. Additionally the number of restaurant liquor licenses in the zone, which extends 1800 feet from Wisconsin and N Streets, would be limited to 68. The move was opposed by GUSA and by businesses in the area.
While developers in the area could sell or transfer their licenses to one another, licenses could not be bought from outside the neighborhood. Georgetown BID CEO Joe Sternlieb told Washington City Paper’s Young and Hungry blog in 2013 that while most liquor licenses in the neighborhood sold for between $40,000 and $75,000, he had seen them sell for as high as $100,000.
When new licenses were available due to the expiration of current ones, they were issued on a first-come first-served basis. In April of 2014, City Paper reported that several D.C. developers had camped out outside ABRA’s office on U Street to apply for four new licenses. ABRA spokeswoman Jessie Cornelius told City Paper that this was only the second time in nearly twenty years that tavern licenses became available in Georgetown. Many developers who won their licenses were never able to open their establishments and the licenses did nothing in their hands. The moratorium was criticized for limiting the Georgetown restaurant scene.
The BID, ANC, and CAG all agreed by Nov. 30 to let the moratorium expire in early April. The regulation was originally set to expire in 1994 but was renewed every five years. Now the ABRA must present their own approval.
