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Jacob Jones had an hour or two to kill Friday afternoon, so he went downtown to Harbour Lights bar for a beer and some pinball.

Told that Lawrence city commissioners want to halt the proliferation of downtown businesses that sell alcohol, Jones had a mixed reaction.

"I personally don't think there needs to be more establishments here; there's quite a few already," Jones said. But he added: "Personally, I'd rather see a space filled in with a bar than not filled at all."

Commissioners say they would rather see retail stores fill those empty spaces. And they fear that the increasing number of drinking establishments is changing the character of downtown.

"I think once you get a certain concentration of drinking establishments, an area becomes like Aggieville in Manhattan or Westport in Kansas City," Commissioner Boog Highberger said Friday. "And I don't think that's anybody's vision of what our downtown should look like."

Commissioners will discuss the issue Tuesday night. But it's not the first time city officials have taken steps to limit the flow of alcohol downtown.

Past moves

In 1994, the commission passed an ordinance requiring new drinking establishment licensees downtown to make 55 percent of their income from food sales -- an effort to limit the number of alcohol-only businesses. The requirement didn't apply to existing drinking establishments, which is why older bars such as Harbour Lights and Red Lyon don't sell food. There are 29 such establishments downtown.

The food sales rule allows restaurants near-automatic qualification for drinking establishment licenses. Aside from the "grandfathered" bars, officials say, there are 15 downtown businesses that have drinking licenses -- to make a total of 44.

And as commissioners have granted licenses for new restaurants recently, they have been questioning whether they set the bar too low.

David Meldoy, 30, a bartender at Harbour Lights, 1031 Mass., pours a beer for a customer Friday afternoon. Though Harbour Lights has been in operation since 1936, concerns about the growing number of bars downtown are prompting the Lawrence City Commission to discuss rules for making it more difficult for new bars to open downtown.

"We are getting restaurants," Highberger said. "And we are getting some people who are pushing the limit."

One business that concerns commissioners: BrewHawk, a new bar and grill at 733 Mass. It received a drinking establishment license in September. In its first months of operation, officials say, BrewHawk made 56.3 percent of its income from nonalcohol sales -- and officials aren't sure all of that is food.

As a result, commissioners will review BrewHawk's license status Tuesday. Frank Tarantino, BrewHawk's owner, said he was meeting requirements and was being unfairly judged on a slow time during the business year.

"I'm a restaurant and bar, just like the establishment before me," he said, referring to O'Dell's. "It's quite unfortunate the city council decided to single me out."

Retail, or something else

But Tuesday's debate will range beyond the issue of food and alcohol sales percentages and into a discussion of what downtown should look like.

Commissioner David Schauner noted that Horizon 2020, the city-county comprehensive plan, designates downtown as a primary retail shopping center. He said too many places that serve beer, even if they are restaurants, conflicted with that vision.

"It's either a prime retail area, or it's something else," Schauner said. "I guess I hope it stays retail."

Maria Martin, co-director of Downtown Lawrence Inc., agreed, to a point.

6News video: Commissioners don't want downtown to be a bar district

"Downtown has always been a destination place. People come for the mix," Martin said. "It's Main Street U.S.A., where you can go from one little specialty shop to another. ... That is what people are looking for."

In recent years, Martin said, "It appears that when someplace closes, we get a new restaurant and bar." A concert venue and Mexican restaurant are replacing the former Masonic Temple and Connex buildings downtown, she noted.

Without a mix of uses, Martin said, "you lose that ambiance of people strolling, when all you have is people strolling from one restaurant-bar to the next."

Closed at 5 p.m.?

Jerry Neverve, owner of the Red Lyon, said he thought bars helped rejuvenate downtown.

"Everybody seems to forget that before the bars and restaurants came downtown, this area closed up at 5 o'clock," he said. "It was pretty ugly down here."

Schauner wasn't quite so sure about bars' ability to revitalize an area.

"More bars do not equate with a better downtown Lawrence," he said.

"Downtown Lawrence doesn't maintain its retail viability if it becomes a haven for drinking establishments," Schauner said. "People don't want to come downtown and bring their kids to do shopping if it's essentially a haven for bars."