Smithfield finds no consensus on social district

SMITHFIELD — Over the course of nearly two hours on Thursday, downtown business owners and Town Council members talked about a host of topics.

One of them was a social district, a growing N.C. trend in which towns and cities allow people to carry beer, wine and mixed drinks from bars and restaurants onto public streets and sidewalks.

Councilman Sloan Stevens is for it.

“We want to attract people downtown,” he said. “This is a tool to attract people … to invest in downtown, to build more restaurants, to refurbish downtown, to bring tax dollars down here, to bring people to come and stay.”

A social district can accomplish that no matter when Smithfield launches one, Stevens said, nodding to hesitation among some of his fellow councilmen. “If it’s two or three months down the road when we start talking about it, that is fine with me,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be done right now.

“But what time do we want it to be?” he added.

A social district will take time to lure investment, so financial gains won’t be immediate, Stevens conceded. “We don’t have the businesses downtown to even benefit from this,” he said, referring to the retail and restaurant mix needed to draw people after hours. “But it’s another tool to generate interest and to get people looking at  downtown.”

Mike O’Dowd is the owner of SoDoSoPa restaurant on South Third Street. He agreed that a social district would not benefit him right away. “But six months from now or eight months from now, it will,” he said.

O’Dowd is also an owner of a restaurant in Clayton, which launched its social district on Thursday. And even though his eatery is outside the district, O’Dowd expects to benefit from it.

“Everyone is watching it because of the buzz,” he said.

Smithfield has little nightlife; a social district could change that, O’Dowd added. “We are a 9-to-5 town,” he said. “After those hours, where are you going to go?”

Brittany Lucas, the owner of Dragon Fly Boutique on Market Street, had the same question.  “We are open till 6 p.m., and I’m gonna tell you what, it’s like crickets,” she said. “We’ll get a handful of people to come in, but it’d be nice to see more people.”

“Even on Saturdays, everything closes at 2 p.m. and it’s really sad to see the town just die,” Lucas added. “Then you go to the next town over, families are out enjoying the day at 4 o’clock and they’re getting dinner. But you can’t do that here.”

A social district could spur downtown businesses to keep their doors open later, Lucas said. “I feel like if the social district was something, businesses would want to stay open,” she said.

O’Dowd said Smithfield could follow the blueprints of other towns with social districts. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” he said, dismissing concerns about the logistics of a social district. “I mean every other town in Johnston County is already doing it the same way.”

For him, the question is not how but when to move forward in Smithfield. “I think that there will be examples in the road maps already that are being drawn,” O’Dowd said. “We just have to decide if we’re ready to make that step.”

Not everyone at the meeting on Thursday was ready to do so.

“I want to be the devil’s advocate,” Councilman Travis Scott said.

He feared a social district would attract homeless people who might become drunk and stumble into the nearby Neuse River or fall asleep on the town’s railroad tracks.

“In Smithfield, we have a group of people that are less fortunate and are homeless,” Scott said. “A lot of them live on the railroad track area and live behind Walmart.”

For them, a social district could prove dangerous, Scott said. “The police have no authority to enforce rules if they are allowed to have a cup of alcohol, and who knows what they put in it,” he said.

In the end, council members had unanswered questions about liability, social district boundaries, a time frame and business participation. And the meeting ended with no consensus on when or if to move ahead.

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