Suds Duds

Prohibition may still be alive and well in Stilwell, Kansas.

Since last fall, Brian Foreman has been lobbying the Johnson County Board of Commissioners to grant him a liquor license to sell more than 3.2 beer at his convenience store and gas station at 199th Street and Metcalf.

But in late October, the commissioners unanimously denied Foreman’s license, calling Stilwell Station’s proximity to the First Baptist Church a “public health issue.” At one meeting, Annabeth Surbaugh, the commission’s chairwoman, noted that Foreman’s proposal violated no law. But allowing Foreman and his family to sell firewater so close to a local church would “change the heart and soul” of the community, she said, according to a Kansas City Star report. Since January, commissioners have refused to raise the issue again for discussion.

Now they may spend tens of thousands of dollars in Johnson County taxpayers’ money defending their actions in court.

Stilwell’s main drag consists of Stilwell Station, the First Baptist Church, a couple of residential subdivisions and an elementary school along a two-lane blacktop road. Because Foreman’s gas-and-go sits at the town’s only four-way stop, some folks consider it part of the gateway into town. Last July, Foreman, with his mom, dad, brother and sister-in-law, bought Stilwell Grocery, a vestige of rural convenience-store-and-gas-station combos with dimly lighted gas pumps and cigarette-smoking cashiers.

Foreman, who is from Overland Park, took over the business in October. He stocked the shelves with canned goods, a full dairy section, candy bars, cigarettes, 3.2 beer and wine coolers. The only other way Stilwellians could buy booze in their town was by the pint at the Stilwell Smokehouse. Otherwise, they had to cross State Line Road or drive 7 miles north to Stanley.

In September, the Alcohol Beverage Control Division of the Kansas Department of Revenue deemed Foreman’s shop properly zoned for liquor sales. Kansas law mandates that the distance between point-of-sale liquor stores and church buildings must be at least 200 feet as measured in a straight line between existing buildings, not property lines. Just to be sure, Foreman commissioned a survey to prove to his neighbors and county officials that his business was more than 200 feet from the church. At about the same time, Richard Lind, a deputy county counselor for the board of commissioners, sent his bosses a letter saying the liquor store adhered to all of the county’s legal requirements and recommending that they could approve Foreman’s request.

Under state law, the Johnson County Board of Commissioners functions as a watchdog for new businesses, granting approval if they meet all state requirements. But while Foreman sought what was supposed to be the board’s rubber-stamp, his next-door neighbor took issue.

On October 23, members of First Baptist Church’s congregation appeared at the commission’s public hearing with a seventy-signature petition protesting the plan. The Stilwell Community Organization, a booster organization whose vice president was also First Baptist’s ad hoc legal advisor, sent a letter arguing that the store’s nearness to the church, a school and a park would encourage drinking at the town’s dry events.

Predictions became apocalyptic. “You can imagine people from as far as 15 miles will pull up to the liquor store, late at night, perhaps already drunk, in order to purchase liquor advertised in neon lights in the windows and to get back in their cars and at times drive through the streets of Stilwell,” wrote resident Mark Angermayer in a form letter to his neighbors.

“Originally, several members of the Stilwell community thought that we intended to add an addition to the building and put a large sign on the building,” Foreman tells the Pitch. “Some members were so misinformed that they thought it was going to be a tavern.”

According to Foreman’s liquor application, he intended to operate two separate businesses at the existing structure — groceries and gas on one side, at Stilwell Station, and a shop called the Wine Cellar on the other. In late October, the commissioners denied the application, having determined that the hops shop would “change and have impacts upon the area.” Moreover, they wrote in their October 23 decision, “although not technically within the 200-foot prohibited area as measured by state officials, [it] will be nevertheless in such close proximity to the abutting church property that it is contrary to the spirit and intent of the prohibition, and may result in unharmonious development with the church property.”

Foreman sued.

Since then, the dispute known as Wine Cellar LLC v. Johnson County Board of County Commissioners has become a case study in small-town political maneuvering. Foreman started his own petition, asking customers if they wanted the right to buy the hard stuff. He has collected more than 500 signatures. Wielding the lawsuit as leverage, Foreman’s lawyers met with commissioners and First Baptist’s pastor, the Rev. Dave Killingsworth, to explain the premises: Foreman’s stores would have separate entrances and a permanent wall between them.

Over the past six months, Foreman says, he hired help and spent more than $30,000 rehabbing his building. He painted rust-colored canopies fire-engine red, hung two lighted yellow awnings along the storefront, filled parking-lot potholes and installed new halogen lights along the sidewalk and over the gas pumps. He also put in a new refrigerator case for the store’s deli.

In December, Stilwell Station donated juice, milk and doughnuts to Breakfast with Santa, the town’s children’s event. Then Foreman joined the Stilwell Community Organization; on January 22, the group’s members wrote a letter to commissioners rescinding their opposition to the liquor store, stating that “supporting or opposing any company, religious, or political event or function is not within the organization’s charter.”

“We didn’t want to be a lightning rod for controversy, and we didn’t want to take a political stand on the issue,” SCO President Jay Cook tells the Pitch. “We have a neutral stand. We are very pro-business, so we support the Stilwell Station and people doing business with them. As far as the liquor issue, we’re neutral on that.”

Killingsworth remains opposed to the store. “We still would not want a liquor store to go in there,” he says. But he says the church doesn’t have an “official position,” because there was no formal congregational vote.

County commissioners have refused to comment while Foreman’s lawsuit is pending. But last month, Richard Lind, the county legal advisor who had originally told commissioners to green-light the Wine Cellar’s application, sent Foreman’s attorney, Steve Mustoe, a letter saying commissioners would not reconsider their position until he dismissed his lawsuit. Even then, Lind wrote, he couldn’t promise that the board would consider a second request from Foreman.

“We don’t understand why the county has chosen to fight this legal battle,” Mustoe says. “They don’t have the power to deny a liquor application. Only the Alcohol Beverage Control Division can do that. Johnson County is saying, ‘We have the ability to control who gets a license based on the way we see fit.'”

Come quittin’ time on a recent Friday, Stilwell Station bustled with blue-jeans-wearing laborers and suit-and-tie executives seeking watered-down six-packs. The shop sold about $250 worth of liquor that day, Foreman says. With a new license, typical Friday sales would quadruple. Outside, cars drove past the newly lighted shop, some of them heading for the state line.