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Walgreens has filed an appeal of the Menlo Park Planning Commission’s 4-3 denial of its request to sell beer and wine at its Santa Cruz Avenue store.
At the June 27 meeting, Planning Commissioners Katie Ferrick, Peipei Yu, Jack O’Malley, and Ben Eiref voted against the permit, arguing that allowing the downtown drugstore to sell alcohol for off-premise consumption was inappropriate and detrimental to Menlo Park’s welfare.
The final outcome now rests with the City Council, which is expected to hear the issue on Aug. 23, according to the city clerk’s office.
Earlier this year the council members voted to allow Beverages & More to open a store on El Camino Real after that franchise lost a bid to open a smaller shop on Santa Cruz Avenue.
How much more is Walgreens going to get in sales,$100-200 maybe a day ? They were in the alchol business before & got out, I wonder why !!
The Bev Mo has already had an armed robbery, and I don’t believe it has even been a year yet. I saw an arrest at Draeger’s last year of some young drunks who tried to steal alcohol. They were pretty unruly. Not a pretty site. I’ve been at the 7-11 near the tracks before 8a.m. when a guy who already looks like he has had a few wants to buy a beer. And I have been on BART and Caltrain with drunk people in the cars. It is not just unpleasant, it is unsafe. The Caltrain drunk was threatening to beat up a female passenger. It took about 10 minutes to find a conductor, and the guy was not calming down even after the woman got away from him.
I used to work in a drug store as a clerk, and they sold alcohol. We used to get people coming in trying to buy just one beer and such. These were not nice customers.
Drugstores are not as busy as Trader Joe’s which has a sizable staff and plenty of customers at any time of the day in case someone gets unruly. When your the 17 year old clerk at the front of the store by yourself and not much traffic, you can be caught off guard.
There has been a string of pharmacy robberies and murders already across the US from prescription drug addicts. There was one on Long Island in the past couple of months where even after the pharmacist gave the addict robbers what they wanted, they still shot the pharmacist, the 17 year old clerk, and even two customers from behind.
As a former 17 year old drug store clerk, leave out the alcohol, Walgreens.
Menlo Neighbor:
with all due respect what does any of that have to do with Walgreens selling alcohol? A drug addict killing the pharmacist and clerks? By your logic we should shut down all pharmacies to prevent drug addicts from shooting pharmacists and clerks.
Walgreens should be allowed to sell alcohol.
I agree Walgreen’s should be allowed to sell booze. If nothing else it will give that nice lady who ran into all those cars and a tree in front of and in back of Walgreen’s another place a more convenient place to buy her alcohol.
Its ludicrous that a country that claims to bear the torch for freedom and human rights requires licenses to sell alcohol. It is an affront to basic human rights to deny or restrict the sale and purchase of a drink that has been a traditional staple that transcends all human cultures around the world.
Why are we wasting all this energy and city staff time fighting a reasonable request by a downtown business to expand their product line? Selling alcohol will not a problem, especially given the volume and limited variety that they would be stocking and selling. It would be a convenience for downtown shoppers (and we want more of those, don’t we?) that would cut down on their shopping stops. The additional tax dollars for the city would be beneficial, too.
Why harm the environment driving here and there? Alcohol is legal. If you don’t want it, don’t buy it. Walgreens should be allowed to sell it. Who knows, perhaps it will expand to sell firearms soon, too? That will go over.
I think Pharmacies that sell booze are cheap and tacky. I can’t believe anyone wants that on Santa Cruz Ave. Besides, you can walk to Trader Joe’s from the same parking spot, so its not like its hard to get wine or beer in the area.