In nine months since City Council approved the first “location reservations” and six months since the first licensee was ready to open, Statesboro has gone from having no liquor stores in its city limits to five now in business.
A sixth received a building permit last fall for renovations and has yet to open.
The fifth and latest store to be completed, simply called Whiskey Business, quietly opened to customers last Thursday, Dec. 29, but owners Jeff and Julie Dawson plan to hold a grand opening later. Occupying the building at 1410 Northside Drive East with the tall facade facing the corner at East Main, Whiskey Business sort of serves as its own billboard.
“It’s one of the nicer buildings I’ve seen that was available to get,” Jeff Dawson said in a phone interview. “And it’s a location away from churches and schools and all of that, which is a big thing.”
The more than 6,000-square-foot building previously housed Bright Ideas Lighting Center. Now the Dawsons have turned about 4,000 square feet into beverage showroom, using much of the remainder for storage. They plan to grow the selection, including that of a cigar room.
Establishing the store, from buying the building to the initial full round of inventory, required an investment of nearly $2 million, he said. So far, Whiskey Business employs about eight people, but the owners expect to hire more as the business grows.
The Dawsons, from Long County, operate an even larger, 10,000-square-foot shop named Bootleggers Package Store, which they have owned since 2016, at Walthourville in Liberty County.
Julie Dawson graduated from Georgia Southern University in 1995 – her degree is a Bachelor of Business administration in finance – and they have a daughter who is a student there now.
The Dawsons have hired mostly local people to staff Whiskey Business but brought in some experienced staff from Walthourville to train them.
The first 4
Statesboro’s first liquor store to open was Clarke Beverages II at 607 Brannen St., Suite 1, which opened June 27, 2022, licensed to owner Bradley Clarke. He too is an established liquor retailer, having owned and operated Clarke Beverages at Newington in Screven County for about 16 years.
Between the first one in late June and the fifth one in late December, three other liquor stores were licensed by the city and state and opened in the city limits of Statesboro.
S’Boro Liquors is located at 860 Buckhead Drive, in the block with a Subway sandwich shop and a Pizza Hut. Robert Baughn is the license holder.
Bootliquors, licensed to Lindsey Martin, is in business at 2823 Northside Drive West, previously a South Georgia Gun & Title Pawn location.
EZ Liquors, 1525 Fair Road, Suite 106, is licensed to Vishakha Patel.
Blue Mile pending
Blue Mile Wine & Spirits, planned for the former Midtown Bar & Grill building at 12 Brannen St. (or in some city documents 102 Brannen St.) was actually one of the first four stores granted a location reservation by City Council, but has yet to open.
In approving the site for Blue Mile owner-applicants Kaleo Lyles, Al Chapman, William Bridwell and Prashant Patel on April 19, City Council in effect denied an application from 3 Brothers 2021 LLC for a city liquor license for the existing store Two Guys Beer Wine & Tobacco.
“Location reservations” are a feature unique to Statesboro’s Alcohol Beverages Ordinance. They were created because the rules City Council enacted March 1, 2022, for the establishment of liquor stores require at least 1,000 yards distance between any two of the stores.
This is double the minimum distance required by state law, but Statesboro’s council imposed no limit on the number of stores and no minimum inventory, after these were discussed as possibilities.
After city staff members noted that the Blue Mile Wine & Spirits and Two Guys locations were within 1,000 yards of each other, the council approved one and not the other.
Limited time
The city’s ordinance requires that a license applicant who receives a location reservation complete all required city building permits and start construction within 180 days. After beginning construction, the applicant has another 180 days to complete it, or could apply for one 180-day extension for extenuating circumstances.
The Blue Mile Wine & Spirits developers apparently met the first 180-day requirement. A city building permit for roughly $500,000 worth of interior reservations at the site was issued to a contractor Sept. 16.
“I see inspections have been taking place on the project,” city Planning and Housing Administrator Justin Williams said this week. “I don’t have any timeline or anything for when it will be completed.”
Lyles and Chapman were not reached for an update, after calls to one of their established businesses, Gnats Landing, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Lapsed reservation
City Clerk Leah Harden supplied the basic status of the permitted stores – opened, under development or lapsed – in answer to a request from the Statesboro Herald.
The one reservation that lapsed was that for Gata Package, obtained last spring by applicants David Blackmon and Jeffrey Spencer, with the site address stated only as Tormenta Way. That would have placed it in the vicinity of the new Eagles Corner Shopping Center, where the Publix supermarket recently opened.
“The 180 days ran out for Gata Package,” Harden confirmed.
‘Not surprised’
With five stores open and a sixth likely, the count of package shops in Statesboro has reached a level Mayor Jonathan McCollar once proposed as a limit. City Council members rejected a numerical cap in favor of only a greater distance requirement.
“Of course, I wanted to see a situation where we put a cap on the number of stores because I understood what this market was going to demand,” McCollar said Wednesday. “So, at this point right now am I surprised that we have five stores open? No, I’m not. Am I anticipating any more down the line? Yes, I am.
“But at the end of the day, I think at this point it’s better for us to be good stewards of the ordinances that we’ve put into place instead of trying to go back and do reactionary governance,” he said.
Liquor stores were prohibited in Statesboro since the at least early 20th century, until a large majority of voters in a November 2021 referendum authorized the city to license them.