[media-credit name=’BRYAN FAUST/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]Madison residents and downtown business owners met Wednesday to discuss the controversial Alcohol Density Plan, which will face a final vote in the City Council in early 2007.

If approved, the plan would prevent business owners from opening new bars and liquor stores in downtown Madison.

According to the city's Alcohol Policy Coordinator Joel Plant, the plan addresses current issues involving downtown violence, sexual assault, disorder and public nuisance. Plant said research shows a high correlation between the density of liquor-licensed establishments and alcohol-related problems, which the plan aims to solve.

The plan would apply to the downtown isthmus area, Plant said, including State Street and the surrounding area. He added that, currently, 44 percent of Class B liquor licenses — the most common type of bar license — are concentrated in one area downtown.

"We're in the very beginning stages of this process; I want to make that very clear," Plant said. "The plan, as it stands now, says if you want to open a new bar or liquor store, the [Alcohol License Review Committee] will not entertain or consider that license."

He said the only exceptions to the plan would be the opening of new hotels, full service grocery stores and some restaurants where a majority of sales are comprised of food purchases.

But the Alcohol Density Plan was met with both positive and negative views from residents and business owners.

Rick Petri, a representative of Downtown Madison Incorporated, said the Business Improvement District downtown has not yet taken a position on the plan, but added most people would agree there is a problem with violence in the city.

"As we see it, we know there's a problem in the downtown in over consumption of alcohol and the violence driven by it," Petri said. "The question for us becomes, what is the most effective way to deal with that?"

Madison resident Rosemary Lee said the plan is concise and well planned out, but added that University of Wisconsin students are not the only problem downtown. Many of the problems, she said, do not come from the density of liquor-licensed establishments, but from bars over serving.

Another solution to the alcohol problems downtown, Lee added, would be to offer better training for bartenders, bouncers and owners to help prevent them from serving to underage drinkers and from over-serving in general.

"I think Joel's plan is very well thought out," she said. "This is reasonable, and he intends to evaluate this constantly when it is passed so it can be tweaked as necessary. But I see this problem as a multi-faceted one."

Yet many downtown business owners like Brad Mullins, who is involved with Madison's commercial real estate business, said enactment of the plan would be detrimental to the city's expansion. The problem with the plan, he said, is that it restricts property rights.

"I know of several properties in these areas that are lower-level-type spaces — if those close, they are never going to be anything but empty spaces," Mullins said. "It's down-zoning, and I have a fundamental problem with the government doing that."