State College Borough Council on Monday held a public hearing on a liquor license transfer for the Centre Region’s first Buffalo Wild Wings location, with representatives of the franchisee presenting information about the restaurant and borough staff recommending conditions for license approval.
Among the recommendations, borough police Chief John Gardner proposed that council restrict alcohol sales to no more than 40% of the restaurant’s total revenue and alcoholic drink sizes be limited to no more than 22 ounces per serving.
The proposal seemed to receive little pushback from the franchisee.
State College Wing Company LLC plans to open a Buffalo Wild Wings inside The Maxxen high-rise, 131 Hiester Street. The LLC is a subsidiary of Grube Family Investments, the largest privately owned franchisee of Buffalo Wild Wings with 66 locations in eight states. The State College location would be Grube’s first in Pennsylvania, though the national chain has 29 restaurants under other franchisees in the commonwealth.
The restaurant liquor license for the State College location would be acquired and transferred from the former Don Patron Mexican Grill, which closed its restaurant 1653 N. Atherton St. in Patton Township in 2017 and has held the license in safekeeping.
The restaurant will have seating for 260 — 214 inside and 46 on a patio. It is tentatively expected to be open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Thursday through Sunday, and at the start will employ 80 to 100 people.
Known, of course, for its chicken wings, Buffalo Wild Wings restaurants offer traditional, boneless and cauliflower wings with 26 sauces and rubs, as well as burgers, chicken sandwiches, wraps, tacos, salads and a kids menu.
Attorney Mark Kozar of Flaherty & O’Hara, who is representing the franchisee on the liquor license transfer, described it as a “family-friendly, casual dining sports restaurant,” where alcohol is a complement to the food, not the primary attraction.
“I don’t call it a sports bar because it really is a restaurant,” said Kozar, a Pittsburgh-based attorney who has represented numerous liquor license transfer applicants in Centre County.
Average alcohol sales for Buffalo Wild Wings locations represent only 14.5% of revenues, with 81.5% from food and the remainder from non-alcoholic beverages, Kozar said. Those fall well within the food-to-alcoholic beverage ratio proposed by Gardner.
The restaurant’s largest drink is an 18.5-ounce tall beer and it does not serve pitchers, Mitchell Grube, chief operating officer of Grube Inc., said.
Other conditions proposed by Gardner included that the license cannot be expanded beyond 131 Hiester St. or transferred to another business or location in the borough without council approval. Alcohol sales would only be permitted when food is available for purchase, and the restaurant must be non-smoking throughout.
It did not include a condition proposed, but often not ultimately included, in the past restricting advertisements of alcohol discounts. In response to a question from council, Grube said Buffalo Wild Wings’ only drink specials are a domestic beer of the month discounted by $1 and an optional happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. that he said his company has opted out of at some locations because “it hasn’t really generated much for us to begin with.”
Kozar said his clients “can live with” the proposed conditions, though, as he has in previous transfer requests, personally bristled at attaching restrictions to a liquor license.
“I have a real real problem with governmental entities telling private businesses exactly how to run their business,” he said.
The proposed conditions are familiar to anyone who has observed previous liquor license transfer requests in State College, which have been met with similar, though not always identical, recommendations from borough staff.
Because State College has more than 1 restaurant liquor license per 3,000 population, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board quota, license transfers into the borough require council approval. The borough can reject, approve or require an agreement to conditions for approval.
Since Pennsylvania began allowing intermunicipal transfers in the early 2000s, all transfers into the borough have come with some conditions.
As in the past, Gardner pointed to the concentration of liquor licenses downtown and alcohol-related crime in the borough as reasons for requiring conditions.
State College has 40 retail establishments selling alcohol under various license types, 36 of which operate within five blocks of the planned Buffalo Wild Wings location. That includes 23 restaurant licenses, for a ratio of 1.8 per 3,000 population.
Research by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Addiction recommends as a strategy for changing the culture of drinking at colleges restrictions on alcohol retail outlet density, noting “the relationship between density of alcohol outlets, consumption and related problems such as violence, crime and health problems,” Gardner said.
Alcohol-related offenses, meanwhile, have accounted for about 30% of all crime in the borough in four of the past five years, with the exception being 2020 when much of the student population was in town for less of the year because of COVID-19. Gardner said he believes alcohol-related crime is underreported because the overriding offense might not be categorized that way, but alcohol may have been an element of the crime.
“We’re still looking at ways to further improve that reporting here,” he said.
He added that more than 500 Penn State students a year are treated for alcohol overdoses each year at Mount Nittany Medical Center.
Grube said that even in college towns where his company operates Buffalo Wild Wings franchises, the restaurants do not see students coming to drink heavily.
“We’re definitely a food destination first,” Grube said. “I don’t think people go to us to drink first. They go to us to eat first and drink as a secondary option.”
Gardner said “it doesn’t sound like this is going to be a problem establishment.”
One member of the public said council should decline the transfer request, another spoke in favor of the license restrictions and two voiced support for the applicant.
Ben Lippincott, a Patton Township resident who owns Blue & White Bottle Shop in State College, called on council to reject the request, saying he is concerned about the volume of liquor licenses in the borough. There are “five or six” liquor licenses in State College currently held in safekeeping that the borough cannot restrict, and could be primed to be put into use for empty commercial space in downtown high-rises.
“The glut of commercial space we have, kind of in my eyes is the result of poor policy in their creation,” he said. “Having poor policy for [the] solution seems kind of counterproductive to me.”
Mark Huncik, president of the Highlands Civic Association, said his group is “not opposed necessarily to the transfer” and welcomed empty retail space being put to use. But, he voiced concerns about whether alcohol consumption would be greater in a town like State College, the density of liquor licenses and an increase in alcohol-related crime that may grow further with the addition of more liquor licenses.
“I think bringing a liquor license in without any restrictions is only set up for conflicts that we will likely see and a lot of unintended consequences,” Huncik said, noting that he supported Gardner’s recommendations and possibly further conditions “that provide additional reassurance to the community that bringing another license into the borough won’t lead to a lot of negative consequences.”
Curtis Shulman, former director of operations for the Hotel State College restaurants and bars, said he doesn’t believe the franchisee would change the business plan established at 66 other locations to suddenly focus on alcohol at the State College restaurant.
“I think dragging a restaurant through the mud with the expectation that they’re going to drive a huge bar scene isn’t realistic,” Shulman said. “… I just think we should take a step back and evaluate the business asking for a transfer and what their intentions are, with the fact they have established 65-plus restaurants built on a model that works. They’re not going to deviate from that for one location. It isn’t conducive to their overall business plan, their intentions to come downtown. They shouldn’t be getting compared to The Basement or Champs or other places that are very, very focused on booze. This is a restaurant. They’re selling chicken wings.”
Kandy Weader, of Bennett Williams Commercial, has been the commercial leasing broker for The Maxxen for the past three years and has prospected numerous national brands for properties in State College. She told council that the Maxxen has 19,000 square feet of “raw space” that can be difficult to fill for a variety of factors, including the COVID downturn, the challenge of competing with more highly populated areas for national brands and a rise in inflation and interest rates.
“It’s going to cost them, I’m going to say $300 a square foot to build this space out,” Weader said. “It’s an amazing location and the owners are very excited to have this opportunity. They feel like it’s a great fit, plus we’ve been trying to get a wing establishment of this caliber in State College for as long as I can remember. We think that’s a very good fit for our area. The Grube family has been super professional. They’re probably in the top 1% as far as professionalism in the national brands I’ve worked with.”
Borough Council is expected to discuss the transfer request at its work session at 7 p.m. on Aug. 12 and must render a decision during its meeting at 7 p.m. on Aug. 19 to meet the PLCB deadline for acting on a license transfer application.
