After much complaining, studying, litter-picking-up and debating, Tacoma is getting its wish.

Cheap, high powered booze — the stuff typically associated with leather faced, publicly inebriated street drunks — will soon be bidding a fond farewell to Tacoma’s Lincoln District. It’s sure to be a kind of Carol Burnett moment, full of ear tugs and tears. (“We’ve had a lot of good times, man.”)



As of October 1, just as the nip of fall begins to bite at Grit City’s homeless boozehounds, the sale of 44 types of “high-alcohol, low-cost beer and wine products” will become a no-no in parts of Tacoma’s East Side and South End. This according to the Washington State Liquor Control Board, who voted unanimously on Wednesday, July 16, to create Tacoma’s second Alcohol Impact Area — which will stretch from I5 to the west, south to 72nd and 76th Streets, east to Portland Avenue, and north to I5. Tacoma’s other AIA, the first of its kind in the state, keeps high powered hooch off Hilltop and out of the downtown core. 



“An alcohol impact area is a geographic area within a city, town, or county that is adversely affected by chronic public inebriation or illegal activity associated with alcohol sales or consumption,” according to WAC 314-12-215.



The Washington State Liquor Control Board may have voted to create the new AIA, but it was Tacoma that asked for it. That’s how the process of creating an AIA works. In April of ’07, the Tacoma City Council, after identifying public drunkenness and alcohol-related crimes as major problems in the Lincoln District, passed an ordinance creating a voluntary AIA in the area. After eight months of politely asking businesses in the new voluntary AIA to halt the sale of high powered booze, Baarsma and Company decided more was needed. In January of ’08 Tacoma formally requested the WSLCB designate Lincoln as a mandatory AIA. Wednesday that wish was granted, after Tacoma sufficiently made its case.



According to AIA rules, after designating a voluntary AIA through ordinance, if a city wishes to go the extra mile and create a mandatory AIA, they must prove the need for one to the WSLCB. Tacoma did this, according to Susan Ream of the WSLCB, by presenting studies that tracked changes in alcohol-related incidents, alcohol-related calls for service, and litter in the Lincoln District since the implementation of the voluntary AIA, as well as with data from Tacoma’s existing AIA. Along with concerned citizen comments at a May 7 public hearing on the proposed mandatory AIA, it was enough to inspire the WSLCB to unanimously approve the latest AIA.



“There has to be a direct link there that shows (high powered booze) is still a problem” says Reams of what a city must do to prove a mandatory AIA is necessary. “Tacoma did that.”



Some enforcement duties related to the new Lincoln District AIA will fall into the lap of the Tacoma Police Department, however WSLCB agents will also make it a priority. Businesses that refuse to halt the sale of the cheap and hard stuff after October 1 will be subject to monetary fines and potential loss of liquor licenses. There are 62 WSLCB licensees in operation affected by the new AIA.



After a year the WSLCB will study the effectiveness of the Lincoln District AIA, as well as its effect on businesses.



“That’s something we looked at with the AIAs in Seattle,” says Reams of the effect AIAs have on businesses that, at least at the moment in the Lincoln District, rely significantly on the sale of high alcohol content products. “Studies have shown the effect isn’t significant to businesses.”



Not significant to businesses, but significant to drunks who’ve been pissing all over Lincoln for years — that’s the goal with the new AIA. Let’s see what happens.