Desire for movie theater spawned Ruston’s last liquor referendum

It was the desire for a movie theater that led to Ruston’s last local option alcohol referendum 21 years ago.

This month, city voters will go back to the polls and face the same questions they faced in 2002, but now the impetus is coming not from a grassroots desire for economic development, but from a pair of corporations that want their Ruston stores to be able to sell a full array of alcoholic beverages.

Primarily at issue in the March 25 referendum is whether Super 1 Foods, a spinoff from Brookshire’s, and Walmart should be able to sell packaged highcontent alcohol, including wine and liquor.

“Their sole aim is to increase their profit margins with little regard to the potential negative impact and risks to our community,” said Andy Halbrook, the former Ruston- Lincoln Chamber of Commerce president who helped organize the successful 2002 movement that’s often referred to as the “restaurant referendum.”

The proposition passed with 57% of the vote, opening the way not only for a theater but also for a flood of chain restaurants coming to Ruston and the expansion of homegrown eateries.

The reason: For the first time, restaurants inside the city limits were allowed to sell drinks.

Halbrook became the chamber’s president in November 1997.

“One of the first things that came up over and over and over again was ‘we don’t have a movie theater,’” he said.

Halbrook began putting together a list of theaters that the business organization might woo to Ruston and started making phone calls.

The conversations began on high notes: Ruston was home to a university; it had a good economy, a competitive environment and a variety of local restaurants.

Then the theater companies would ask about national chain restaurants.

“I would say, ‘well, we don’t have any,” Halbrook said.

And the talks would sour. “Everybody told me until you had those type of restaurants, or a full dining experience — restaurants that offered a full beverage menu — they’re not going to put a movie theater in Ruston,” Halbrook said. “That was it across the board.”

The chamber formed a political action group, LINCPAC, which undertook to figure out how to get alcohol in restaurants so Ruston could get a movie theater.

“That was the impetus that got the ball rolling,” Halbrook said.

Proponents commissioned a study the results of which confirmed that money was leaking out of Ruston and Lincoln Parish because moviegoers had to leave town to go to the show.

While they were gone, they often bought food and shopped wherever they were.

“Other municipal governments were benefitting from the fact that we didn’t have a motive theater,” Halbrook said. “We knew we were losing sales tax dollars. We knew we were losing retail sales.”

The chamber and LINCPAC discovered the only way to change local alcohol laws was through a state statute that required gathering enough voter signatures to compel Ruston’s Board of Aldermen to call a referendum.

On the first try, petitioners got the requisite minimum of 25% of registered city voters. The referendum was set for Nov. 5, 2002.

But state law required — and still does require — that all five allowable local option propositions be on the ballot. That’s where things got tricky.

The issue wasn’t as simple as restaurants being able to sell alcohol. Voters had to decide to keep or nix everything that was already legal and add what they now wanted to be legal.

LINCPAC and the chamber didn’t want to promote liquor stores or bars, just restaurant sales, Halbrook said. They had to educate voters.

In the end, voters did what LINCPAC and the chamber had hoped. They agreed to continue to allow the sale of beer, both for on- and off-premises consumption — both options had been legal in Ruston since the 1970s — and they added the restaurant sales.

All three propositions passed with more than 55% voter approval each. But voters rejected the option that would have allowed bars in Ruston and the option that Brookshire’s and Walmart now want.

The bar proposition failed by 63% of the vote; the expanded sales by grocery, convenience, and package stores by 67% of the vote.

“ The chamber worked diligently to keep (the beer sales) legal and add (the restaurant sales), as tacitly requested by national chain restaurants, which always precede amenities such as movie theaters choosing a new location,” Halbrook said. “This was a grass roots effort by community leaders and concerned citizens of Ruston.”

And now? “It’s been imposed on us,” Halbrook said.

Should that make a difference? “Yes. Will it? Probably not,” he said.

Halbrook said he still supports the beers sales and the restaurant sales, and he still opposes the bar option. He hasn’t yet taken a position on the expanded grocery store sales.

The awkwardness of the ballot brought risk 21 years ago and still does, Halbrook said.

“There was a huge amount of risk then and there’s a huge amount of risk now,” he said.

Most of the risk is that vot-ers won’t understand the technical wording on the ballot and could end up voting against the restaurant option, something Halbrook said would be economically devastating.

The Texas consulting firm handling the getout- and- vote campaign for the March 25 referendum is urging voters to just vote “yes” on all five options, without any delineation on each option.

The Hatch Consulting Group argues sales tax is still leaking out of Ruston because patrons can’t buy wine and liquor.

They say parish taxing bodies are giving up about $ 2.5 million annually, the bulk of which would come to the city of Ruston. The figures are based on a similar campaign the group ran several years ago in Pineville.

Here is what will be on the March 25 ballot.

• Proposition 1: Allowing stores to sell package alcoholic beverages with less than 6 percent alcohol content. That’s currently allowed in Ruston and basically is beer sales in grocery and convenience stores.

• Proposition 2: Allowing beverages with less than 6% alcohol content to be consumed on premises. That’s also currently allowed in Ruston and is beer sales.

• Proposition 3: Allowing consumption on premises of alcoholic beverages containing one- half or 1 % more alcohol by volume. This is the bar option.

• Proposition 4: Allowing sale of alcoholic beverages containing one-half or 1% or more alcohol by volume by package only and not for consumption on premises. This is the addition Brookshire’s and Walmart want.

• Proposition 5: Allowing high-and low-content sales in restaurants only. That’s the option that was added in 2002.

Early voting in person begins March 11.