On the agenda at next Tuesday’s Little Rock city board meeting: A proposed ordinance that would allow patrons of River Market establishments to carry open containers of alcoholic beverages outside at certain times.
The River Market Entertainment District would allow people who purchased alcohol at a bar or restaurant to walk around the River Market with the drink on Fridays from 5 p.m. to midnight, Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to midnight, and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., as well as on certain holidays. They would be required to use designated containers and ID wristbands.
The creation of such an “entertainment district” was made possible by Act 812, sponsored by Sen. Trent Garner (R-El Dorado) and passed by the General Assembly earlier this year. The law, which goes into effect next week, allows cities and municipalities to create the districts in designated contiguous areas that are zoned or generally used for commercial activity. Mountain Home and El Dorado have already passed ordinances creating entertainment districts and Little Rock is one of several other cities across the state with plans to follow suit.
At the Little Rock board of directors meeting on Tuesday evening, the board will take up an ordinance that would establish rules for the creation and regulation of entertainment districts within the city generally and another ordinance specifically establishing the River Market Entertainment District.
Here are the boundaries of the River Market Entertainment District under the ordinance:
The River Market Entertainment District encompasses all public places lying within (1) Block 19 1 of Pope’s Addition in the City of Little Rock and (2) 30 feet of each side of the centerline of the following 20 blocks of the following streets in the City of Little Rock: 300 – 600 blocks of President Clinton Avenue, 21 100 block of North Rock Street, and 100 block of St. Vincent Plaza, also known as the 100 block of North 22 Commerce Street.
The D-G today reported on the entertainment district set to open in Mountain Home:
Mountain Home Mayor Hillrey Adams said an eight-square-block district in the heart of downtown will open Wednesday. The district will be open every day from 4:30 p.m. to midnight, Adams said, noting that he’d already heard from several potential new businesses that want to locate there.
“There’s been a buzz about it in the community,” Adams said. “We’re just anxious to get some growth going downtown. We recently had several hundred people coming to town for a fishing tournament. You want those folks when they’re here to say, ‘Hey, there’s this neat place downtown where we can go and hang out for a few hours’ instead of staying in the hotel room all night or going to a fast-food place.”