Salt Lake City Council last night approved the zoning text change sought by JAM that is required for the Marmalade bar to serve liquor and wine, rather than just beer, as they do now. If you've read my blog before, you know that this was not the final step. ---

Liquor bars were added to the mixed use zone, or MU, as a conditional use. That's local government-speak for "ask your neighbors if it's OK." More precisely, that means JAM needs the blessing of the Capitol Hill Community Council before the city will approve the bar's application for a conditional use permit, which would then allow them to serve liquor. "Conditional use" also means the city can tack-on requirements (like minimum parking, for example) to mitigate any problems perceived by neighbors that may result from granting the permit. 

The Capitol Hill Community Council will vote tonight on whether to give its blessing to the bar. That means anyone who lives in that neighborhood, or operates a business, can show up and vote.

Without seeing that community council's bylaws, I'm not sure what the boundaries are. Sorry, wish I could be more precise, but suffice it to say that if you live in Marmalade or Capitol Hill, you get a vote. In my community council (East Side), renters are treated equally as homeowners, roommates each get votes, and even landlords get a vote if they own at least one property in the community, but only one vote even if they own several. I imagine the Capitol Hill Community Council has similar, if not identical, voting rules.

JAM's Facebook page says the meeting is at 7:30 p.m. in the East Building of the State Capitol, behind the cafeteria.

Even if JAM gets the approval from the community council tonight, this process is not done.

Somehow that vote is going to need to be registered by the City Council or at least Planning Commission (sorry I don't know which), and that probably requires a meeting to publicly approve it. At some point after, JAM will need to get a liquor license from the Department of Alcohol and Beverage Control. After that, whew, I think the process will be over.