We used to joke that the black plastic bag, emptied of its big bottle of beer and gently floating on the breeze, was the neighborhood flower. Corner stores selling liquor is a constant issue in certain areas, with a fight occurring right now over the store at 2300 Venable Street.

2300 Venable Street, at 23rd Street/Tulip Street

The license for the store at 2300 Venable Street recently had to be re-applied for, after it was discovered that the proprietor now operating the store had been selling alcohol at the store for months without an ABC license. At this time, the proprietor’s application is complete but it being disputed and, as such, will have to undergo a hearing at some point in the near future.

Opponents of the new license argue that denying the application to sell alcohol from this convenience store will cause no hardship on people seeking to purchase alcohol because there are already three other ABC-licensed convenience stores and a state-run ABC store within the six-block area where the subject store is located. Proponents of the license were too busy peeing in the alley to comment^*.

All of the information cited below is drawn from a 194-page report (produced by the Richmond Police Department) that spans twenty-one months of police-dispatched calls to traffic zone 119. Zone 119 is a small part of First Police Precinct that includes the convenience store at the intersection of Tulip/23rd and Venable Streets. Two separate proprietors have operated the store during that twenty-one month period. The figures should be seen as representative of the consistency of the problems that arise primarily from the sale of alcohol there.

• There were 1258 separate police calls during these twenty-one months to an area of just a few blocks. A total of 1820 police units responded to these calls. The top two types of calls to the area were 320 ‘disorderly’ and 119 ‘intoxicated person.’

• Of the 1820 police units dispatched to traffic zone 119 during the twenty-one months, eight percent of the units responded directly to the store.

• When calls logged to the intersection at which the store sits and to the block on which it sits, this figure jumps to a whopping twenty-four percent. Included are calls dispatched to the 2300 block of Venable Street as most of those calls were the result of trouble on the sidewalk, not in the houses, only seven of which are currently occupied.

The store also exhibits overt violations of Richmond’s Code of Ordinances (2004), with a corresponding negative impact on the neighborhood. These code violations include the location of a public pay phone, and the store’s disposal of trash and garbage. City ordinance requires that a public pay phone at a commercial site be located at least 15 feet from the street. The pay phone at the store does not meet this criterion. Activity at the pay phone has encouraged loitering in the vicinity of the store even during the hours the store is closed.

The convenience store disposes of its trash and garbage in receptacles provided by the city. According to ordinance the store is not permitted to leave the cans on public property. They are, however, lined up on the city sidewalk.

*Not really.