Liquored up

Numbers from the Michigan Liquor Control Commission confirm something that we already know: MSU students like to drink.

The Michigan Liquor Control Commission tracks all liquor that bars and restaurants purchase. The numbers in this story include only liquor — not beer or wine — purchased at wholesale prices by the establishments.

City Pulse looked at the numbers for all establishments in the tri-county area that hold a Michigan Class C liquor license, the standard liquor license for bars and restaurants. Unsurprisingly, the biggest spenders are located just off of MSU’s campus. The top three in the area, Dublin Square, Rick’s American Café and Harper’s Restaurant & Brewpub, each purchased nearly $250,000 in liquor last year and are on pace to hit similar number this year.

Those three are significantly ahead of the rest of the region. The Lansing bar with the highest liquor tab, Harem Night Club (now Duke’s Saloon), spent just over $186,000 last year. Overall, tri-county bars and restaurants spent an average of $28,155 on liquor last year.

Dublin Square and Rick’s are both on Abbot Road, under 300 feet apart, and Harper’s Restaurant and Brewpub is just around the corner on Albert Avenue. Add in P.T. O’Malley’s,with the fourth highest liquor bill in East Lansing and eighth highest in the tri-county area, a few doors south of Rick’s, and you have what is likely the booziest corridor in Great Lansing.

This nexus of liquor consumption also makes it a hotbed for unsavory activities — again, no real surprises here. According to documents provided by the East Lansing Police Department, police visited Dublin Square, owner of the largest liquor bill, 155 times in 2014. Many of these were standard bar checks, but officers also responded to reports of fights, disorderly conduct, larceny and a variety of alcohol related offences.

But Rick’s, with the second largest liquor bill, attracted the most police attention last year. An eightpage report provided by ELPD details 219 police visits to the establishment — that averages out to one visit every 1.66 days last year.

Rick’s also had a slew of liquor law violations in the ‘80s, including several counts of sales to minors and overcrowding. It was also implicated in the 1998 death of MSU student Bradley John McCue, who died of alcohol poisoning on his 21st birthday after consuming a reported 24 shots of liquor.

Harper’s is not far behind Rick’s with 181 police visits last year, and P.T. O’Malley’s had 153. For comparison’s sake, the Peanut Barrel, a few blocks east on Grand River, has the fifth highest liquor bill in East Lansing and the 10th highest in the tri-county area but had just 19 police visits last year.