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Restaurant owner fights police objection to liquor license renewal
DAYTON — The owner of Cold Beer & Cheeseburgers is asking customers to support his efforts to renew the downtown Dayton restaurant’s liquor license over the objection of the Dayton police department.
“It is not right that we should be closed because the criminals on the street cannot be controlled,” owner Robert Byers said in an email to customers and to Dayton Mayor Gary Leitzell. “I feel that we are under siege.”
Byers acknowledged two liquor control violations last fall of serving an underage customer — “Our liability, our mistake,” he wrote — but said other problems at or near the restaurant at 33 S. Jefferson St. have been unrelated to his customers and outside of his control.
“For the first 16 years of our professional existence, we rarely ever had to rely on the police to solve our problems. Since the new RTA hub has opened, our life has been turned upside down,” Byers wrote. “We have made mistakes in understanding this new reality, but have responded with increased security at our expense.”
Byers said the problems stem not from bus riders, whom he described as “for the most part good working folks,” but instead from “criminals who prey on groups of people, offering them various services.”
The final decision on renewal of the restaurant’s liquor license lies with state liquor-control officials. But local governing bodies such as the Dayton City Commission can file objections to such renewals. According to a March 30 letter from the Dayton City Commission to Byers, the Dayton Police Department objected to the Cold Beer & Cheeseburgers liquor permit renewal.
Details of the police department’s objection were not available late Monday. An “informal resolution” objecting to the liquor permit will have its first reading at the city commission meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, April 13, and city commissioners will vote on the issue at their April 20 meeting, the letter said.
In his email, Byers asks customers to come to either commission meeting “and speak on our behalf.”
Byers wrote, “If I cannot garner support in this matter, then I will accept that (Cold Beer & Cheeseburgers) is no longer viable downtown.”
The restaurant has been open for 18 years. A second Cold Beer & Cheeseburgers is located at 1060 Patterson Road at Wilmington Pike.
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