Sunday a.m. liquor law up for passage
BY BILL BIRD wbird@stmedianetwork.com March 11, 2011 11:14PM
Updated: September 24, 2012 6:25AM
If you live in Naperville and keep forgetting to buy the bubbly for your regular Sunday champagne brunch, chances are good you’ll now be able to pick it up at the last minute without having to leave town.
Members of the City Council on Tuesday night will consider immediate adoption of an ordinance that would end a six-month pilot program and permanently allow 35 businesses to sell packaged liquor beginning at 8 a.m. Sundays.
A council agenda item calls for the possible waiving of the traditional first reading of the new ordinance and instead passing it outright.
Such a waiver would require at least six affirmative votes. Councilman Richard Furstenau was the lone dissenter when council members voted 7-1 during their March 1 meeting to permanently allow the 8 a.m. Sunday sales of alcohol.
The test program, begun in September, proved wildly successful. Packaged liquor merchants in the city had complained of being at a disadvantage, as stores in nearby communities were selling alcoholic beverages hours before Naperville’s starting time of noon Sundays.
Officials of the Jewel-Osco supermarket chain, in a letter to city officials, said their research showed Naperville residents patronizing Jewel-Osco stores in nearby towns on Sunday mornings and spending more than $700,000 on packaged liquor.
Municipal staff members then surveyed 22 nearby cities and villages, and found more than half permitted the sale of packaged alcoholic beverages beginning at 8 or 10 a.m. on Sundays.
Furstenau earlier this month defended the existing ordinance, saying residents already have “plenty of time to buy liquor” on Sundays.
