Last call for 2 a.m. stampede?

For the better part of a decade, designer and copywriter Kim Snow, co-founder of Providence’s Downtown Neighborhood Alliance, has lived in a loft above Tazza Caffe and Symposium Books in Westminster Street’s Alice Building.
Snow likes the typical noise and bustle outside her window, in the “belly of the beast,” as she called downtown Providence last week. “It’s a city – I wouldn’t call [noise] a problem,” the 34-year-old Massachusetts native said. “I think some people … are overly sensitive and forgot that they moved into a downtown. That’s the whole point in living there: it’s social and loud and fun.”
Still, for downtown’s growing residential population – and for the safety of everyone who visits at night – there are still safety issues associated with the city’s nightlife during the wee hours of the morning, Department of Arts, Culture & Tourism Director Lynn McCormack said in a recent interview.
On most Fridays and Saturdays, a crowd of as many as 10,000 club-and-bar patrons spills into the streets of the city’s downtown and Jewelry District after the 2 a.m. closing time. That flood leads to occasional fights and clogged city streets.
That’s why the city and the Hospitality Resource Partnership, along with R.I. House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, are drafting legislation that would establish six-month pilot programs allowing bars and restaurants in communities across the state to stay open an hour later – to 3 a.m., McCormack said. That hour would be part of a “staggered” closing. Each community would decide for itself whether to approve a local pilot program.
“It wouldn’t be to serve alcohol. Alcohol would still be turned off,” McCormack said. “What it would do is allow for patrons to not all be pushed out onto the street at exactly 2 a.m.”
McCormack and Providence Foundation Executive Director Daniel A. Baudouin both say they expect the legislation to be introduced in the current R.I. General Assembly session. If the measure is enacted, the pilot program would be created after a series of public meetings. McCormack said it could be launched next fall or winter.
The pilot program would be modeled after a program created in 2007 in San Jose, Calif., which boasts more than five times the population of Providence.
Thirteen restaurants and bars in that city participated in a 180-day pilot and reported social benefits, according to a city of San Jose memorandum from April 2008. The program “was not a revenue generator” for the businesses, but it did improve “customer demeanor” and create a safer environment for the staff, the memo said.
But San Jose’s police couldn’t draw any “clear conclusion” about whether the pilot made the city’s after-hours population safer.
The police reported an 18 percent drop in overall “events,” but the number of drunk-driving arrests rose during the pilot to 66, up from 43 in the same period the year prior. Similarly, “drunk in public events” rose slightly, from 323 to 333 events, according to San Jose police statistics released in an evaluation of the program.
The Providence Police Department did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
For Snow, the pilot program could be a “creative” solution to traffic congestion downtown and in the Jewelry District. Getting out of some of Providence’s neighborhoods – with their tight and often one-way streets – is “a problem for everybody, not just residents,” she said. “I don’t want visitors … to feel like it’s hard to get in, hard to get out, that it might be loud, it might be dangerous. And certainly merchants don’t want people feeling that way.”
Clubs in the Jewelry District, which would be part of the pilot, attract some of the city’s rowdiest nightlife in Providence, said Jim Brown, president of the Jewelry District Association, a group of business owners and residents.
Brown, who lives above Lot 401, a nightclub, said there are some big questions that won’t be answered until after the pilot program wraps. The extended hour could quiet down the neighborhood or it could only serve to extend the closing-time noise.
“I just think there’s sort of a more systemic problem with parking in that club area,” he said. “I like the fact that people are coming in and spending money in Providence, but I think the benefits are skewed a little bit to the club owners. … [They] make a lot of money, but it seems like a social cost.”
Baudouin added that there are no participation requirements for the nightclubs or bars.
“I think you’ll get enough participation for the nightclubs, because they know that the 2 a.m. running of the bulls isn’t healthy for anyone,” he said. “It could be a bit of extra business, too, who knows.”
There are also new attempts at the city level to regulate nightlife in Providence – which recently branded itself “The Creative Capital” and sponsors annual music festivals such as the street-filling Sound Session and Friday night concerts at Waterplace Park.
Councilmen John J. Lombardi, of the 13th Ward, and Michael A. Solomon, of the 5th Ward, have proposed ordinances that would “professionalize” the bar and alcohol industry in the city, drawing a line between responsible and irresponsible nightlife, McCormack said.
The first ordinance would establish fines for public drinking – a problem in parking lots near clubs, especially in the Jewelry District – from $100 up to $500, McCormack said. Currently, the cost of a public-drinking fine isn’t defined and the proposed ordinance would put Providence on par with Boston, she added.
Another ordinance would require that all “floor hosts” – a euphemism for “bouncer” – pass criminal background checks and be trained and licensed before taking their posts at the doors of city clubs and bars. The Providence Nightclub Association helped shape that ordinance, McCormack said. “It’s not unlike RBS training now, which is the responsible beverage service training that bartenders are required to take,” she added. “It’s professionalizing the industry.”
And a third proposed city ordinance would require that anyone who buys a keg of beer must first get a Providence Board of Licenses permit to do so. That’s an effort to cut down on rowdy college parties and underage drinking, McCormack said.
Jim Iezzi, whose family has run Standard Liquors on Eddy Street since 1937, said that adding another step to the process of getting a keg would be prohibitive for his business. And he’s one of the largest keg-sellers in the city, selling about 40 a week.
It’s not just college students who are buying kegs, Iezzi added. “I have a lot of customers who have systems in their house – that’s becoming popular, too,” he said. “They’re not going to want to go through the hassle of getting a permit every time they want a keg.”
While Snow, of the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance, said she usually doesn’t mind the noise, she added that easing the 2 a.m. traffic congestion in Providence might go a long way toward attracting the new and different restaurants and bars she’d like to see downtown. And it also might attract some new customers to venues that are already there.
“It’s going to take creative solutions,” Snow said. “It’s just about how we can all get together and make it easier for everyone to get downtown to have fun.” •