re: Rumor: new restaurant opening in Lakeview?

Yep. Pretty much every commercial area that is close to residential (b1a zoning) is now conditional use for alcohol. Makes no real difference if you are a bar or a restaurant seeking a license. Conditional use requires city planning commission approval then full council approval. Takes a minimum of four months and thousands of dollars. Its also difficult to get real estate deals done because lessors and sellers don't want to pull their properties from the market while potential lessees and buyers go through the process.

I would say about 80% of the city has a moratorium on alcohol permits. Even if you buy an existing business with a permit, you will have to apply for a waiver (unless you buy the old restaurant/bar's corporation).

In most instances, after you pay the city over a grand for the waiver and pay for all the architecial drawings (city wants 16 of them) and meet with the neighborhood groups to get their approval, you should be ok. But it's no guarantee and all the money that you put out is of course non refundable. (You could me in to close to 10k)

And if you are opening a bar (or a restaurant for that matter) where a Moratorium is - the city does not allow you to get poker machines (even if you jump through hoops and are granted an abo license)

One would think that all of this would increase the value of existing operations with alcohol and/or video poker machines in areas where a moratorium is located but since the city requires you to purchase the old location's entity, it has made it harder to find buyers for your business and values go down.