Three Geneva businesses fined after liquor law check
Geneva Mayor Kevin Burns on Wednesday issued fines of $1,000 to two bars and a liquor store and suspended their liquor licenses for the first Thursday of Swedish Days in 2013.
All three served alcohol to an underage woman during Swedish Days this past June.
The Little Owl Pub, 101 W. State St., and Caboose’s Bar and Grill, 300 Crescent Place, can still serve food but no alcohol during the one day suspension next year during Swedish Days, the city’s largest festival.
SavWay Fine Wine and Spirits, 515 W. State St., also will have its license suspended from 5 to 10 p.m. on a Thursday of next year’s festival.
“Obviously, a closure on a Thursday of a major festival is a severe penalty and rightfully so,” said Burns, who also serves as the city’s liquor commissioner. “I respect the fact that mistakes happen. But under my tenure as mayor, the penalties are going to sting — and that’s by design.”
Representatives from each entity apologized last week and admitted fault for selling beer to a 19-year-old woman who was working undercover for the Geneva Police Department.
The city warns all license-holders of the annual check, which is done during the Swedish Days festival in June.
Police said that in all three cases, an employee asked for identification, looked at it, then sold her the beer. Her identification was the vertical driver’s license, which is the type given to drivers under 21, but is marked with the date she would turn 21.
The Little Owl was fined and given a one-day suspension in 2007. Caboose’s was cited in 2008, when it was under different ownership.