Watkinsville floats retail sales for beer and wine

Those who wish to comment on the possibility of three convenience stores selling beer and wine inside of the city limits just as 90% of the rest of county does already are counseled to attend the next two Watkinsville City council meetings for the reading of the proposed beer and wine retail ordinance on the second Wednesday of the month.

Councilman Brian Brodrick, realizing the mathematics making reasonably certain his defeat in opposing the measure, instead took the tact of making the measure the best it could by tightening what he thought were a few holes in the conservative document.

City Attorney Joe Reitman conversed with Brodrick and addressed other concerns through out the evening. Reitman works for a dozen different municipalities including Bogart which now allows beer and wine sales (but evidently does not do so yet). He cobbled together the latest proposal from some of those and refined from the time when Watkinsville recently allowed beer and wine sales in restaurants (now two years ago).

The thinking, admitted council member Samantha Purcell, is to attract a store like Healthy Gourmet to Town Center. Now whether it is that or a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, I would be willing to bet that some new retail outlet will come into Watkinsville real soon.

Brodrick also lobbied for his own pork earmark at the corner of Barnett Shoals and Main Street where a pink pig once stood at an old antique market not all that many years ago. The City did receive the funds finally to begin Streetscape II as well as a grant with OCAF to put art on the walls of some businesses and passage ways looking more like an alley way rather than the gateway to the Artland of Georgia.

Four business licenses were approved including a photographer John Weber and artist Cecelia Allee for her Delores Schofill-inspired Studio and Gallery at 131/2 North Main Street. Robert Amos will begin landscaping at 1030 Williamsburg Place while Tarek Gaballa will be performing YHR Financial Services out of his home behind the Council man Joe Walter's car wash at 60 Cedar Hill Cirlce.

The Streetscape firm selected at the end of the evening is Travis Pruitt, who has an office on Mars Hill Road locally.