The ongoing liquor store saga in West Green took a big step towards getting resolved at Monday morning’s county commission meeting. The county approved a liquor license for West Green Liquor, potentially the second of two liquor stores in West Green.
The county’s approval, however, is not the final step in the process. Now the state has to decide if it will grant the license. And that’s not necessarily a given. The issue is that, according to state guidelines, liquor stores must be 1,500 feet apart from each other. There is another liquor store, Fairway Liquor, 1,203 feet away from West Green Liquor. In May of last year, the county granted Fairway Liquor a license. West Green Liquor was under construction at the time and not ready to apply for its license. In effect, Fairway Liquor beat them to the punch.
In June of last year, the county denied a liquor license to the store’s owners, AJ and Daz Patel, due to their store’s proximity to Fairway. In August, the Patels appeared before the county commission asking the county to reconsider its decision. The reason, they said, was because the county had no distance limits between stores in the local ordinances. The Patels wanted to the county to grant the license then they would take up the rest of their case with the state.
The issue was on the agenda for last month’s meeting but the commission tabled it pending word from the state. At Monday’s meeting, it was back on the agenda despite the county not having heard from state inspectors. Commissioners believe that the county needed to take action before the state would render its decision. This morning, commissioners voted to grant a license to West Green Liquor. Now the state will make its ruling. As such, the fate of West Green Liquor is still very much in the air.
In other news, commissioners approved:
- A change order in the amount of $25,800 for the health department building renovations;
- An agreement with the Southern Georgia Regional Commission for the county’s 2025 CDBG application for road and street improvements;
- Pipe replacement on Mallard Pointe Drive and Old Bell Telephone Road in the amount of $73,276.60 for both projects. Thrift Brothers LLC was the low bidder;
- Placing an old fire truck on govdeals.com for sale; and
- Purchasing a dump truck and semi truck for the road department from South Georgia Western Star ($176,826 for the dump truck and $147,868 for the semi truck) and a rotary mower from Lasseter for $29,500.