CALEDONIA — Jeff Doty was careful to preface his case to reopen Cal-City Grocery with a simple and to-the-point statement.
“I am not here to cause animosity among the community,” Doty told the Caledonia Board of Aldermen Saturday. “I am here to run a legitimate business.”
Still, the board voted against conditions for Cal-City Grocery to sell cold beer, either under a grandfather clause or a variation to a city ordinance.
Aldermen initially decided to give the store until March 1 to reopen the store or lose its grandfather status in the city’s alcohol ordinance, which states beer cannot be sold within 1,500 feet of a school and cold beer can’t be sold. Aldermen then voted against the finding, 3-2, a move which reverted back to the ordinance adopted in 1945. Doty needed a variation to the ordinance, but aldermen failed to second Mayor George Gerhart’s motion for a variance.
“Once again, I’m here to run a legitimate business, create jobs, and bring in revenue to the city of Caledonia,” said Doty, whose business was expected to bring in around ten percent of the the city’s tax revenue, based on past figures from the store’s previous years.
“(The decision) is a big mistake for Caledonia.”
Citizens for and against Cal-City Grocery selling cold beer weighed in on the decision.
“If a variation is granted, that is going to open a big bucket of worms for the other restaurants who might want to sell alcohol,” citizen Ken Byars said.
Tommy Wiggins agreed with that thought, and brought up the safety of the community.
“We don’t need another community like two or three others within the county that always have shooting and killing every night,” Wiggins said.
The city of Caledonia has been a hotbed of debate on the topic of alcohol sales since 1945, when a petition, which was later adopted as a law, was signed by the citizens of the city to prohibit the sale of beer within 1,500 feet of schools or churches. The issue arose again in 1982 when it was rumored that a nightclub was on the horizon for the small town. In response to the rumors, aldermen adopted another ordinance stating that only warm beer could be sold inside the city limits.
Because Cal-City Grocery was already operating at the time of the ordinances passing, the convenience store was grandfathered in. Since then, a church has been built across from the establishment, and up until November of last year, the two structures existed symbiotically. When the store’s original owner, Bill Pearrow, died in September of 2010, his daughter, Valerie Riley, and the rest of her family scrambled to find someone to take over the business. They soon found a willing party, and a five-year lease was signed, the business was still covered under the grandfather clause. Fifteen months later, however, the lease was broken, ultimately closing Cal-City Grocery for two months and nulling the grandfather clause.
Doty quickly expressed his disagreement with the nullification.
“I’ve read the ordinance very closely and studied up on the laws, and there’s nothing in them that states a specific time frame in which the grandfather clause expires,” Doty said. “I understood that the clause was still in effect as long as the business stayed at the same location.”
Riley said the store is no different from any other that sells cold beer.
“This is my daddy’s business,” Riley said. “He had it since 1973. In that entire time, nothing has happened at Cal-City that doesn’t happen at Walmart on a regular basis. This is our livelihood, and we’d hate to see it go away.
“It breaks my heart. It really does.”
Grant Mitchell, pastor United Pentecostal Church located near Cal-City Grocery, said he would love to see Cal-City make a comeback.
“I’m not here to judge,” Mitchell said. “I have drinking in my own family. I’d love to see Cal-City open again, and I’d even be the first to go eat in the deli,” he said.
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