Sitka restaurant owners looking to score beer and wine licenses will have to wait — at least for now.
At its regular meeting on Tuesday (8-12-25), the Sitka Assembly delayed a vote on whether to petition the state for additional Restaurant and Eating Place Licenses, which allow restaurants to serve beer and wine.
Alaska’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board limits the licenses to one for every 1,500 people. Sitka has just over 8,000 permanent residents, as of 2024. That allows the city to have up to six licenses.
Sitka technically has already met the state limit for a town of its size. It has six year-round licenses and two seasonal licenses, which can only operate six months out of the year and are subject to different population limits. That’s not counting licenses that allow establishments like bars and hotels to serve hard liquor.
But sponsors of a resolution considered by the Sitka Assembly on Aug. 12, say that number doesn’t necessarily take into account the influx of visitors who come to Sitka, especially throughout the summer cruise season. In recent years, the number of cruise passengers visiting Sitka has more than doubled, to over 600,000.
Co-sponsor Thor Christianson said Tuesday he hoped to help local businesses expand to meet the seasonal visitor demand and provide more year-round dining and employment opportunities for locals.
“I purely saw this as a way to try and help out some of our local businesses,” Christianson said. “It turned into a much bigger deal than we ever thought it was going to be.”
Sitka’s not the first Southeast community to ask the state for more licenses — both Juneau and Haines have made similar requests, successfully.
The Sitka Assembly initially considered petitioning the state for six additional licenses. But after hearing from stakeholders during Tuesday’s public comment period, they considered dropping that number to three.
Mary Magnuson owns Mean Queen, a local restaurant and bar. She said adding any more licenses will hurt existing license holders.
“This is clearly going to make an impact,” she said. “Certainly, I am all about people starting up businesses, and you do it by buying an existing license. That’s how it works. This business of trying to count visitors as citizens when they’re here five hours a day is ridiculous.”
Patricia McPike, another local business owner, agreed.
“As in fishing, there have to be limits,” she said. “Not everyone gets a permit if one isn’t available. When years are really good and harvests are high in the fishing industry, prices can go down. And I feel like we’re looking at something similar here.”
On the other hand, business owners like Luke Bruckert, who owns Campfire Kitchen, said more licenses means more opportunity to expand their businesses and support economic development.
“I just want to speak to the spirit of competition that can exist between businesses that raises the bar within a community,” he said. “For businesses like ours, we don’t only want to serve tourists. We want to raise the bar for everyone in the community year-round.”
After a lengthy discussion, assembly members agreed further research was needed on the issue, and asked city staff to reach out to stakeholders for more information.
“There’s just too many unknowns,” said assembly member Kevin Mosher. “I definitely support new businesses and support old businesses. And there’s no real easy answer to this tonight. I’m not against possibly doing it at a future date, but right now, I just don’t know about this. So that being said, I make a motion to postpone this until the fall.”
The group voted unanimously to postpone the discussion until their Oct. 28 meeting.
