If you see it from bedroom window ...

“Real World” personal observations for Naperville City Council from two citizens who have spent the past six years residing in a residential community adjacent to another similar, much smaller, establishment on Ogden Avenue, in the same area as the proposed Show-Me's “sports bar.”

When addressing the concerns of residents living adjacent to establishments serving alcoholic beverages after dark, we can attest to the following “quality of life” issues: 1. For the time they are permitted open and can drink, “they will come.” 2. They come on Harleys, pickup trucks and other noise machines without any consideration of time of night, and/or noise made. 3. After several hours of libations, differences of opinions surface, and the parking lot becomes the courthouse, with both sides oblivious to sound made until the arrival of police. 4. Because of the “no smoking” law, the parking lot becomes the meeting place for other activities, with its associated trash in the morning.

I would hope that this application would provide an opportunity for the council to revisit rules and ordinances as to radical limitations on alcoholic serving locations relative to residential areas, and their “hours of service.” Can we live with all of the above in our life? Of course. The larger question is should we have to, in one of the best places to live in America?

Ask any of the residents in Bennington, who reside next to the “privacy fence” for your answer. A simple “smell test” for me would be, for a commercial business that serves alcohol to the public that has a parking lot can be seen and heard from a residential bedroom window, it probably doesn't belong there.

Fred and Mary Lou Bricketto

Naperville