A moratorium proposed earlier this month by the Adams Morgan Advisory Neighborhood Commission would stretch from the Duke Ellington Bridge at Calvert Street down 18th Street to S Street and from 18th Street to 16th Street.

Liquor moratoriums already have been enacted in three other Northwest Washington neighborhoods — Georgetown, east of Dupont Circle on 17th Street and west of Dupont Circle on P Street.

ANC 1C passed a resolution at its Aug. 5 meeting that committed it to either support or reject such a moratorium at its next meeting on Sept. 2nd. Enacting a moratorium would require approval by the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

"We’re looking at doing it right and doing it professionally," said Todd Mosely, Adams Morgan ANC chairman. "We want to get a gauge from the community first."

Mosely told the meeting that the purpose of the resolution was to start a "30-day conversation" about a moratorium.

Reaction from the business community in Adams Morgan runs from mixed to vocally opposed to the proposal.

"Personally, I think I support it," said Mary Abbajay, co-owner of Toledo Lounge and Crush nightclubs with her sister Stephanie. "I’m very concerned about the mix of liquor licensees and businesses in the neighborhood."

Abbajay is also president of the Adams Morgan Business Association and said the association’s membership is evenly split in its support of a moratorium.

"Everyone I’ve talked to (about the moratorium) is very open-minded," Abbajay said. "We’ve lost a lot of retail in the past years, but not everyone agrees the way to (reverse) that is legislation."

The proposed moratorium is supposed to help stabilize the neighborhood’s retail businesses and to encourage other non-alcohol related businesses to move into the area.

Neighborhood resident and real estate broker Pat Patrick is vehemently opposed to any sort of moratorium and disagrees that a moratorium would encourage retail business in the neighborhood.

"It is a blatant lie that restaurants have raised rents and other stores can’t come in," Patrick said, disputing the popular conception about Adams Morgan.

"The reason (non-alcohol serving businesses) have left is that the community hasn’t supported them," Patrick said. "As much as we say we love them, the community en masse has not supported them."

The Adams Morgan proposed moratorium comes on the heels of a June 10th proposal by the Dupont Circle ANC to extend the moratorium in the 17th Street corridor for five more years.

David King, ANC commissioner from Dupont Circle, said his commission voted for the continuation to preserve the business diversity of the neighborhood.

"You go over to 17th Street at 11 in the morning and it has a very vibrant, active look," King said. "If you go over to 18th Street during the day, it sort of has an abandoned, morning-after look. To an extent, what we did on 17th Street was an effort to prevent what has happened on 18th Street."

King said that at the meeting where their resolution was passed, no business owners or liquor license holders spoke in opposition.

The proposed three-year moratorium in Adams Morgan would not seek to reduce the number of active liquor licenses in the neighborhood, unlike the current moratorium in Georgetown which is seeking to reduce the number of tavern licenses from 12 to six.

It would, however, freeze the number of liquor licenses in the described radius for all classes of liquor licenses, including liquor stores, beer and wine stores, restaurants and nightclubs.

The proposal cites various factors for requesting a moratorium from the ABC Board, all of which must be proven to the ABC in order for a moratorium to be granted. These include the limiting of needed products and services to residents, strains on residential parking and pedestrian safety, increased disturbances and a negatively impacted economic mix.

If the ANC votes in favor of a moratorium at its September meeting, the commission would then have to map out precisely the area of the moratorium and document the negative impact of liquor licenses on the neighborhood.

That information would then be submitted to the ABC and they would review it and either approve or reject the proposal.

Mosely said that most likely the proposal would be submitted to the ABC in November or December if the ANC votes in favor of supporting a moratorium.

Mosely said the commission has been talking about this issue for well over a year and it should not come as a surprise that they finally proposed it.

Copyright 1998, The Common Denominator