Meridian tries to discourage ‘closet bars’

MERIDIAN, Idaho – City officials who want to discourage the recent phenomenon of “mini-bars” – drinking areas designated inside larger bars – are proposing a new ordinance that would make it hard to set them up.

The mini-bar concept was only recently discovered as a way to help liquor license owners hold onto new permits without going to the expense of opening a new establishment.

They are essentially closets or tiny rooms inside existing establishments. They have their own entrances but remain locked. If customers want a drink, they hit a buzzer, and someone opens the bar to serve them. The drinks must remain within that bar.

For example, there is a place called “Backwater” inside the Whitewater Saloon, which serves only a $10 tequila drink.

The proposed new ordinance would require each license to be attached to a physical street address, and would require applicants to submit a floor plan of their bars, along with the floor plans of any other licensed premises located within, connected to or immediately adjacent.

“The intent is to make sure we have a clear, defined location for where the license is being used. The police want clear guidelines for enforcement,” Meridian City Attorney Bill Nary said. “It’s not a huge change. It’s just to make enforcement clearer.”

Owners of the three mini-bars – including Mike Eddy, a Garden City councilman – say Idaho’s rules and city codes for establishing new bars are in conflict.

Eddy, Gary Bates and Doug Beehler applied years ago to the state’s Alcohol Beverage Control bureau for a state liquor license, which can issue them only after a city’s population increases by 1,500 people. The agency issued licenses more quickly than the applicants had expected because of rapid growth in Meridian.

Once they get a license, operators have 90 days to put the licenses into actual use. But Meridian requires all bars to obtain a conditional-use permit to operate, a process that typically takes four to six months.

Although the three recently approved mini-bars will be exempt from the proposed ordinance change for the next year, it could be a lot more difficult for other such bars to open, Nary said.

“I can’t see us giving an address to a door,” he said. “We have to control what we can control, and that’s the enforcement.”