Iowa City 21-only fight: It's all about the money

Most University of Iowa students don't even remember the days when underage patrons weren't shooed out of the city's bars at 10 p.m. In college crowds, institutional memory's pretty short.

But for townies like me, it's a little exhausting to hear that we're reopening the bar-entry age debate just three years after it supposedly was, finally, resolved. Especially since the push is coming not from fun-starved 19- and 20-year-olds, but from a couple of grown men with lots of money at stake.

Why now? I don't see any compelling reason but one. After all, none of the anti-21 folks' dire predictions have come true. Downtown Iowa City is hardly a shuttered and dusty old ghost town. If anything, it's got a more diverse mix of businesses than it did during the Great Barification, when rising rents and single-minded business plans choked out more eclectic fare.

The music scene is thriving; our great venues are doing fine. If anything, there are more ears listening to more shows in more places than ever before.

There has been no surge in emergency room visits or reports of assaults or any other sign of the threats to health and safety we were warned would follow if we forced underage adults (who, in an interesting paradox, we were assured weren't drinking in the bars) to take their partying elsewhere. Quite the opposite. Nor have our neighborhoods been ravaged by anti-21 rhetoricians' favorite boogeyman: The Unregulated House Party.

And if plenty of 19- and 20-year olds would stay in bars past midnight if they were allowed there, they're not the ones who are leading the charge. That's telling. In fact, student leaders have been clear: To them, the ordinance is not that big a deal.

But it is to folks like Josh Erceg, a manager at Martinis, and George Wittgraf, owner of the cavernous Union Bar. That's why they're spearheading this effort to reopen the debate.

In a Daily Iowan editorial about the issue last week, student editors decried the blatant self-interest behind the effort, concluding: “Let the 21-ordinance stand.” They're right.

Despite what we're almost certain to hear in the months ahead, opposition to the 21-only ordinance is not about health or safety. It's not about the legal drinking age or the rights of young adults.

It's about money.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net