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Chattanooga council asks legal staff to draft tighter rules for liquor-store permits
Summary
Councilmembers instructed legal and planning staff to draft amendments to liquor-store rules to add clearer, objective review criteria and stronger spacing/per-capita limits; feedback is due to staff by March 31 and a draft ordinance is expected for future consideration in mid-April.
Chattanooga City Council on March 17 asked city legal and planning staff to prepare ordinance amendments that would tighten the city’s review standards for liquor-store special exceptions, aiming to reduce subjectivity and lower the risk of successful legal challenges.
The request followed a presentation from Phil, the city attorney, who provided a checklist of possible review criteria—such as recent drug or theft offenses and code violations in a surrounding radius—that the council could require in permit applications. Council members focused debate on two tools staff could use: minimum spacing from sensitive uses and a per-capita cap. Currently the code allows a liquor store to be within 200 feet of a park, place of worship, school, daycare or another liquor store, and a separate code provision limits locations to one per 3,000 residents, which would permit roughly 60 stores citywide under current population figures. Katherine reported the city had 42 liquor stores as of 2024.
Council members discussed options including returning spacing to 500 feet or adopting larger buffers (members mentioned 1,000 feet as an option) and pairing any distance rule with a per-capita cap so that both constraints apply. Legal staff cautioned that overly broad geographic buffers could sweep in neighborhoods the council did not intend to affect and that more narrowly drawn, data-driven criteria would be less vulnerable to judicial challenge.
Council agreed to send written feedback to Phil by March 31 so legal and planning could prepare draft amendments to chapter 5 (section 5108 was identified as the section to amend). The council asked staff to aim for a mid‑April appearance on a future-consideration agenda for initial review; no final vote was taken at the meeting.
The item will be revisited after staff produce ordinance language; councilmembers asked for specifics such as the radius for crime comparisons (examples discussed included a half‑mile and one‑mile measures) and objective thresholds tied to local crime averages.
