Residents drowning in booze

Las Vegas City Council members recently took a strange photographic tour of an eastern Las Vegas neighborhood.

They saw shot after shot of places where vehicles with drunken drivers at the wheel had crashed into concrete walls, utility poles, parked cars, front yards and houses.

It had its intended effect. The council voted down a liquor license for a Wal-Mart on Nellis Boulevard that wanted to add alcohol to its wares.

But there's a larger problem that concerns some residents, which is what they describe as an overload of alcohol-related businesses in their neighborhood. And it will be much trickier to address than just opposing a single liquor license.

"In the end, it was a good decision, and I hope there's a major change in that policy," said Dean Dupalo, a longtime resident of the area around Charleston Boulevard and Nellis who organized the presentation to the council. "There is no perfect solution, but to mitigate a worsening situation is the first step."

At least 56 liquor outlets are in the 89110 ZIP code, according to a review of Las Vegas and Clark County business licenses.

That includes bars, restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores and liquor stores.

That's higher -- as much as twice the number -- than what is found in other ZIP codes in Las Vegas. But it's the locations of the liquor outlets as much as the number that trouble Dupalo.

A map plotting the retailers' locations shows heavy concentrations on Nellis and Lamb boulevards and a smattering of outlets on Owens Avenue, surrounding a residential neighborhood without a buffer between commercial and residential development.

"My neighborhood is surrounded on three of the four sides," Dupalo said. "It really puts us right in the cross hairs of people who want to drive home drunk.

"I've looked at the master-planned communities and been very envious. They were well thought out, instead of the piecemeal approach."

Research had demonstrated that, though legal, too much liquor in a neighborhood can be detrimental.

In general, "the higher the density of liquor outlets in an area, the higher the crime rate," said Robert Nash Parker, a University of California-Riverside professor who has studied the social impact of drug and alcohol use. "It creates an atmosphere about the place.

"Usually, the kinds of neighborhoods where there are problems are where you have a mixture of retail and residential."

Studies have looked at alcohol and other factors that contribute to crime in neighborhoods, said Las Vegas police spokesman Ramon Denby. At least for 2007 and 2008, however, crime statistics don't show that the northeast part of town is hurting.

"What they're saying is not necessarily not true, but the numbers that we have are not supporting it," Denby said. "Even DUI accidents in that area are down."

There were 41 drunken driving accidents in 2007 in the Northeast Area Command, he said, compared to 34 in 2008.

Other crime dropped as well. Violent crime was down 13 percent, crimes involving a gun went down 20 percent, property crime dropped 15.5 percent and robberies declined 16 percent.

Mayor Pro Tem Gary Reese, who represents that part of Las Vegas, "absolutely" agreed that the neighborhood has an "overabundance" of alcohol outlets, but said that, except for restricting new licenses, there's little the city can do at this point as long as the businesses operate legally.

"I've been told that we can't use competition ... as a reason for denial," Reese said. "If a person wants to come in over here and open up another 7-Eleven type store, even with all this other competition, it's his right to lose his money.

"The way things are, maybe some other people will go out of business. It's just one baby step at a time. If you have a new applicant, you can restrict them."

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate @reviewjournal.com or (702) 229-6435.