Yes, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners recently voted 4-3 to relax elements of the indoor smoking ban they enacted last year. However, that doesn’t mean much – if any – change for us here in Eden Prairie. Ben Steverman wrote an article for the December 20, 2005 Star Tribune that sums up the probable impact of the new smoking ban in the western suburbs of Hennepin County.
The key factor in getting an exemption to the County’s smoking ban will be if your business sells more liquor than food. In other words, are you a restaurant or a bar? Bars can get exemptions. Restaurants cannot. The new County smoking ban ordinance takes effect on January 3, 2006. Exemptions will be valid until July 2007.
In Eden Prairie, we don’t have any conventional bars. Our local liquor ordinance requires businesses who hold liquor licenses to have more gross sales revenue from food than from liquor. If they don’t meet that criteria, we can revoke their liquor license. None of our restaurants would qualify for an exemption under the new County ordinance based on our own local liquor license ordinance.
The only possible businesses that might qualify for an exemption are the three private golf clubs in town: Olympic Hills, Bent Creek, and Bearpath. There is an exemption possibility for these three institutions because they might meet the definition of a “private club” under the new ordinance. I’m not sure about that, but it’s a possibility.
The Hennepin County smoking ban for bars and restaurants has been in effect now for almost a year. While I’ve heard bar and restaurants owners in other parts of the County complain about the impact of the ordinance on their business over the past year, I have not heard a peep about it in Eden Prairie. That’s not to say there hasn’t been an impact, but I’ve asked around quite a bit and all I hear from restaurant managers in Eden Prairie is that they’ve felt no negative impact.
In fact, most would not say it publicly, but now that the ban is in place, they like it. And most of their customers do too.
