The Boston Licensing Board decides tomorrow whether to grant beer-and-wine licenses to two long-time markets - the East Broadway Market at 869 East Broadway at O Street in South Boston and the Beacon Hill Market, 55 Anderson St. at Myrtle Street on Beacon Hill.
The board's hearings on the two applications this morning were as varied as the neighborhoods themselves.
East Broadway Market
Attorney Paul Gannon said market owner Tony Patel and manager Michael David Gannon want to add beer and wine because of a public need for a local market at which residents could add beer or wine to their purchases without walking all the way down to I Street or to P and East 6th streets. He said the store would not sell single bottles of beer - or tiny bottles of wine.
Residents alternated between those who condemned the proposal and those who supported it.
Opponents cited impressionable young students at the Catholic school across the street and raised the specter of them hanging out outside the store trying to get adults to buy them beer and wine. They said that South Boston is already awash in alcohol, that approval would encourage other convenience stores in City Point to seek beer-and-wine licenses, that beer and wine sales would make already bad traffic and double parking at the intersection even worse and further block ambulances and firetrucks, that the nearest existing booze mart is actually just three blocks away and all the "young people" who support the proposal should just get off their duff and walk the short distance if beer is so important to them.
"It is imperative that our school children are protected from the environment of liquor being sold across the street where the kids go for slushes and soda and snacks after school," City Point Neighborhood Association President Luanne O'Connor said.
"Somebody is going to get seriously hurt or killed with all the craziness at this corner," an East Broadway resident said.
Proponents said that just because Broadway and L Street are lined with restaurants and taverns and liquor stores doesn't mean that the smaller area around Broadway and O isn't short of a convenient place to purchase beer and wine.
One resident, who identified himself as Marc on East 5th Street, said the area has a high concentration of people without cars, who would appreciate a convenient market - and which would mean not as many people would drive there. But also, he continued, there's a fundamental class issue when comparing the East Broadway Market and that place on P Street: The market is a friendly place, where people get value for their money. That other place? "Boston is known be a blue-collar city, where people value the money they work hard for," but he gets "no sense of value there."
Max Lobel, who lives across the street from the market, objected to the idea the market would prove a gateway for today's impressionable youth. He said they're already exposed to alcohol at a young age at home - think of all the holiday baskets filled with beer and wine, he said. And parking? Sure, there's about 20 minutes a day when double parkers descend on the intersection each day, but other than that, well, he parks his car on the street and has no problems.
Paul Gannon told the board that St. Brigid and Gate of Heaven parishes took no position on the proposed addition of beer and wine - and that at a neighborhood meeting, several school parents said they had no problems with the proposal.
Beacon Hill Market
Jason Indelicato is seeking board approval for beer and wine as part of his proposal to buy the market and rename it the Beacon Hill Wine Market so he can transform a decades-old "sort of tired and rundown convenience store" into an urban market of the sort people at the top of Beacon Hill would want, Indelicato's attorney, Andrew Upton, said.
This would include craft beers and "finer wines" and food items to go with them, such as charcuterie, "which I am told involves some types of cured meats, like ham," Upton said. But don't worry, he added, Indelicato would continue to stock staples, so "you will be able to buy Froot Loops and paper towels and all that stuff," he said.
One thing the market will not sell: Beer kegs. Also, no malt liquor and no tiny bottles of alcohol, Upton said.
The store will have neither flashing neon signs nor gaudy paper signs in the windows, and won't offer lottery tickets or cigarettes, he added.
Upton said a key public need for beer and wine sales at that location is because it is basically at the top of Beacon Hill. "People at the top of the hill don't want to walk to the bottom of the hill and then walk back up the hill with their bags," he said.
The Beacon Hill Civic Association voiced its non-opposition to the proposal, according to a liaison from the city Office of Neighborhood Services. One resident wrote a letter of support, another wrote a letter of opposition, based on the potential impact on local property values and the potential threat of public drinking. Aside from the liaison, nobody spoke about the proposal at the morning hearing.