Airport board grounds festival beer sales

Van Wert independent

The reasons seem to change from meeting to meeting, but the results don’t: For whatever the stated reasons, Van Wert County Regional Airport will not host a beer concession at the Wheels-N-Wings festival in May.

At the last meeting of the Airport Authority, board members split 3-3 on whether to allow a beer concession at the airport. Board members opposed then said the sticking point was the airport having to obtain the temporary liquor permit needed to sale beer at the event.

With that in mind, organizers went back to the drawing board and came up with a compromise that they hoped would make the Airport Authority happy: creation of legislation that would make Elks Lodge 1197 a vendor at the festival, and thus able to be the entity that obtained the liquor permit.

Airport Authority Board Chair Clair Dudgeon said he felt Van Wert Law Director Greg Unterbrink did a good job explaining the liability issue – or lack of liability, for the airport – while Joel Williams also made a good presentation on behalf of the Elks Lodge. Dave Roach of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the other organization that would have benefited from the beer concession, also attended in place of Executive Director Larry Lee, who was in Albany, N.Y., on Thursday.

But, surprisingly, at least to Dudgeon, the compromise fell flat as the board this time voted against allowing a beer concession at the airport, no matter what.

“I was surprised from what our original discussions were,” the county commissioner said after the meeting. “If we go back a month ago (with the new proposal), we would have had a different vote.”

Dudgeon said that, in his opinion, the difference between Thursday night’s meeting and the one a month ago was an intense lobbying effort put forth by opponents of the bill to sway Airport Authority members away from voting for the beer concession.

Dudgeon said Airport Authority members received lots of emails and phone calls on the issue prior to Thursday night’s meeting.

“There was a lot of activity and contacts made,” he said.

Dudgeon said reasons given for not allowing the beer concession basically centered on not wanting to turn a positive event into a negative one, the fact that serving beer at the airport was something that had never been done before and the fact that people might boycott the festival if beer was served.

The Airport Authority chair noted, though, he felt more people will boycott the event if beer is not served.

Those opposed to serving beer have said they would be happy to organize fundraising events for the CVB ad airport, similar to statements made when a beer concession was proposed at Fountain Park.

However, Dudgeon said results of the only fundraiser ever held after City Council voted down a similar beer concession in Fountain Park – a Christian-themed event held in the Van Wert High School gymnasium that featured Joel Penton and some other Ohio State football players – were, if anything, a bit underwhelming. “They told us it would make well over $3,000 and it brought in $600 in revenues,” he noted.

Roach, who also said he was disappointed in the vote, added that the CVB and other Wheels-N-Wings organizers will have to relook at whether to have a band for the festival – and where the group should perform – since the idea of serving beer was made in conjunction with having a band.

Meanwhile, City Council could look at the overall legislation banning alcohol sales on city-owned property, but even if Council allows unlimited beer sales – which is not likely – it would not help this year’s Wheels-N-Wings.