City and borough officials in Kodiak have been trying, unsuccessfully since 2024, to let more local restaurants get licensed to serve beer and wine. In part, to better accommodate the estimated 60,000 tourists who visit each year.
But a state regulator recently told city officials that vendors in Kodiak haven’t really been using seasonal and event-based licenses that have been available for more than a year.
A state-issued restaurant or eating place license [REPL] allows an established restaurant to also serve beer and wine with food.
The number of these licenses each community can have is limited, based on the local population: one per 1,500 people. But after the law regulating these and other alcohol licenses in the state was rewritten, municipalities like Kodiak can now request more and other licenses.
A few years ago, state lawmakers overhauled Alaska’s alcohol laws, known as the Title 4 Rewrite. Game changing new rules went into effect at the start of last year on Jan. 1, 2024.
Kristina Serezhenkov, the acting local government specialist with the state Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office or AMCO, told the Kodiak City Council on Jan. 21 about newer seasonal and event licenses that are available to local vendors.
The seasonal version of these licenses only allow restaurants to provide beer and wine service for up to six months a year.
The number of seasonal licenses are also limited, but largely by a community’s annual visitor count, instead of its population. The ABC Board can only issue this seasonal restaurant or eating place license if the applicant is a bona fide restaurant, is operated in a community with 40,000 people or less and the municipality must receive at least 4,000 visitors a year.
Under those rules, Serezhenkov said Kodiak is eligible for one seasonal restaurant or eating place license – and no one has applied for it.
"And AAC 305.310 sets the count out for one seasonal restaurant or eating place tourism license per 1500 visitors per visitor day. And then calculation per visitor day is calculated by the amount of visitors per year," she explained. "And then you divide it by six months so that’s 182 days."
So if Kodiak annually sees 60,000 visitors, which reports from the city indicate, by state statute, that means Kodiak is only warranted one seasonal restaurant or eating place license.
And another brand new license which was created by the Title 4 Rewrite is the fair license. Serezhenkov said the nonprofit Kenai Peninsula Fair Association used that license this past year to sell beer and wine at an annual fair.
“And so you have to have existed as a fair, and you have to hold fair-like activities," she stated. "It is limited by population count.”
Although this hasn’t been formally proposed, this type of license could be used during Kodiak’s annual Crab Festival, a festival held downtown typically in May. But so far that license has also gone unused locally.
Kodiak city and borough officials have been focusing their efforts on year-round licenses. Last year, the City of Kodiak asked for more restaurant or eating place licenses [REPLs], but the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board said it wasn’t eligible for more. Now the city and borough are pursuing a joint request or a change in the law.
