Dream Hits a Freeway Barrier : Alcohol Policy May Send Plans for Gift Shop Down the Drain

A new Agoura Hills ordinance banning take-out alcohol sales by new businesses along the Ventura Freeway may send a woman’s dream of opening a gift shop into the drink.

The anti-alcohol measure, adopted in July to deter drunk drivers, has become a sobering reality for Kim Hanft, a 38-year-old mother of two who wants to sell wine in gourmet gift baskets in her new shop.

Hanft’s shop also will feature specialty items such as Indian artwork, handmade baskets, large cloth cacti and fabric flower bouquets--the kinds of things Hanft herself loves.

But in case the public does not share her taste, Hanft is counting on gift baskets of food, gourmet coffees and wine to provide one-third of her sales.

Without the baskets, Hanft fears she will be forced to close the store a year or two after it opens. Now in the midst of ordering merchandise and designing a logo for the store, Hanft hopes to open for business early this summer. Her shop will be in a shopping complex now being built next to the freeway on Roadside Drive.

“A basket of coffees and teas and teddy bears is nice for a gift if you’re going to somebody’s house for dinner and want to bring something nice,” Hanft said. “But you need gourmet food and wine baskets for the corporate clients.”

660-Foot Limit

The ordinance, which bans take-out liquor sales within 660 feet of the freeway corridor, was passed by the City Council after a drunk driver traveling the wrong way on the freeway collided head-on into a car carrying four people. All four, including a Ventura schoolteacher and her 7-year-old son, were killed in the December, 1986, collision.

The driver, Daniel E. Murray, now 26, of Lancaster, was not hurt, authorities said. California Highway Patrol investigators said his blood-alcohol level was 0.19%, nearly double the level at which a person is considered legally intoxicated. Murray was charged with four counts of second-degree murder and his trial is scheduled for Jan. 20 in Van Nuys Superior Court.

Initial reports indicated the driver bought the alcohol he had consumed shortly before the crash from an Agoura Hills gas station near the freeway. Although police later determined the alcohol was bought elsewhere, the city passed its anti-alcohol ordinance the following July.

Mayor Jack Koenig said the ordinance is part of a long-range planning tool to rid the freeway corridor of places that sell liquor.

Although Hanft said she agrees with the council’s concerns, she insists her carefully packaged wine baskets will not be a problem.

The wine bottles, she said, will be packaged in coolers or baskets and covered with plastic for gift-giving. Prices will range from $8 for a “nice little white Riesling in a ceramic cooler” to several hundred dollars for baskets containing multiple bottles of Dom Perignon or other fine wines, she said.

“Would you be so desperate for wine that you would walk into a store and pay twice as much as you would in a liquor store because it’s been specially packaged?” Hanft asked. “And if you were that desperate, wouldn’t you drive 700 feet to a liquor store?”

Last month, she asked the City Council to amend the ordinance or grant her a special permit to sell alcohol. City officials have agreed to consider her request and the Planning Commission will conduct a hearing on the matter Jan. 28.

Hanft has promised the council to keep the wine baskets in the back of the store and to not advertise them in the store window or on signs visible from the freeway.

Mayor Fears Lawsuits

But Koenig said city officials are proceeding with caution for fear that exempting one business from the ban will leave the city vulnerable to lawsuits from other new businesses wanting to sell liquor near the freeway.

“The principle of the law is more important to me than any individual business,” Koenig said. “I wouldn’t approve an exception to it unless I can be assured it won’t vitiate the law or cause the ordinance to be overturned.”

Businesses that sold alcohol at the time the ordinance was adopted are allowed to continue, the ordinance specifies. As a result, city officials say, about half a dozen gas stations and liquor stores near the freeway are free to sell wines and other alcohol.

Hanft says that is unfair.

“There’s a wine warehouse right there, for God’s sake. Right off the freeway,” she said.

Hanft originally had planned to open her store in May in another shopping center along the freeway, two blocks from her present location. She received the needed city approval to apply for a liquor license from the Alcohol and Beverage Control Board. But after a dispute with the building owner over renovations, Hanft signed a lease in late July to open at the new location. In the meantime, the anti-alcohol ordinance was passed.

Hanft said she learned of it when she tried to get a liquor license at the new location.

By then, she said, she had put down a $6,000 deposit on the store and signed a five-year lease obligating her to pay rent of $2,200 a month.

Because of that commitment, Hanft said she will open her store even if she is prohibited from selling the wine baskets. And even if the store doesn’t make it, Hanft said she won’t starve.

Her husband, Irwin, 58, owns an insurance company and the couple lives in an elegant home in the affluent Highlands section of Agoura Hills. The worse that might happen, Hanft acknowledged, is she’ll have to sell her Mercedes 380 SL.

“It’s the principle,” she said. “I don’t think the ordinance was intended to limit a business such as mine.”

Hanft says in a very real sense she sympathizes with the council’s rationale in passing the law.

“I am an alcoholic myself,” she said. “I do not drink at all. I wish everyone were teetotalers, but they’re not.”