COVINGTON, Ga. — The Covington City Council voted to revise its cigar lounge ordinance on Monday, March 2, changing the allowable area from the Town Center Mixed-Use (TCM) zoning district to the Corridor Mixed-Use (CM) zoning district.
The council vote tied 3-3, with Mayor Fleeta Baggett breaking the tie in favor of the change. In doing so, Baggett voted alongside Council members Kim Johnson, Travis Moore and Jared Rutberg.
Johnson brought forth the proposal to change the zoning, providing insight into the reason behind the consideration. She shared that multiple prospective cigar lounge owners had looked at the vacant spaces in TCM—which envelops much of the downtown area—but struggled to meet a requirement that prohibits businesses from serving alcohol too close to churches and schools.
Without meeting this distance requirement, the lounges would not be able to obtain alcohol permits.
Judy Thagard, the city’s planning and development director, said more about this state requirement for obtaining alcohol licenses.
“Our TCM zoning district has several places of worship peppered throughout the zoning district and also a couple of schools that makes it quite difficult for a cigar lounge to locate, should they choose to also have alcohol as part of what their business model would be,” Thagard said.
State law prohibits the sale of distilled spirits within 100 yards of any church and 200 yards of a school, per O.C.G.A. § 3-3-21(a)(1)(A). Similarly, O.C.G.A. § 3-3-21(a)(1)(B) prohibits the sale of wine or malt beverages within 100 yards of a school, with exceptions for grocery stores conducting retail sales for off-premises consumption.
While the law does not specifically prohibit cigar lounges from operating close to a school or church, council and staff expect that most cigar lounges would seek out an alcohol license.
Johnson indicated that this stipulation has already dissuaded potential cigar lounges from opening up in the TCM district.
“The [old] BB&T location didn’t work out,” Johnson said. “And so that was like really the only spot. So, to me, now to try to force a square peg into a round hole…it’s too close to places of worship. It’s too close to schools. So I felt like at this point, if we tried to move forward with anything other than that particular [old BB&T] building, it would be an infringement on a church or a school.”
By changing the allowable zoning district to CM, the city aims to create more availability for future lounges to exist without these setback struggles.
Moore described the change as “opening up more inventory” for the prospective businesses.
“The CM’s going to open it up to Pace Street, anything up and down 278, some of Washington, some of Jackson,” Moore said. “So for [applicants] to go into it, it’ll be a lot easier—there’ll be a larger inventory in the CM district than TCM.”
Thagard said that if the city initiated the planning text amendment, it would have to next go before the planning commission. She anticipates that the planning commission would likely opt to keep the use as by a special use permit as it was in TCM, rather than making it allowable by right in CM.
“I do know that with the [old] firehouse, several of the old Ramsey buildings were looked into, and they just couldn’t meet that setback requirement to be able to get the alcohol license,” Thagard said.
“...As a matter of fact, on the [old] firehouse—cause we had several restaurants that also wanted to go there and sell alcohol—the state sent us an email that they would not consider that as a property that would be allowed to have an alcohol license.”
