Dave Boulter is feeling a little picked on by City Hall.

He owns Henry’s, a combination coffee shop and bar on Eighth Street, one of the few coffee shops in town that allows smoking.

But the Lawrence City Commission is talking about cracking down on the growth of downtown drinking establishments. And in a separate development that causes bar owners equal alarm, the commission later this month will discuss the possibility of a smoking ban in public places in the city.

“It’s hard enough to run a business without having difficulties with the city,” Boulter said.

Judging by the turnout last week at a gathering of more than two dozen bar and restaurant owners worried about the possibility of a smoking ban, Boulter’s not alone in his feelings.

“A number of guys have lost sleep over these issues,” Boulter said. “These guys feel the city could come in at any moment and shut down our business.”

City officials say, however, that their aim isn’t to harass bar owners.

“The interest in protecting downtown … coincidentally happens to be coming at the same time we’re getting the smoking task force report,” Commissioner David Schauner said. “It’s not our intent to pick on legitimate business people — bar owners or anybody else.”

Big business

The selling of alcohol is big business in Lawrence. The city is the sixth largest in Kansas, but it collected the third-highest amount of alcohol sales taxes in the state during fiscal year 2003, according to the Kansas Department of Revenue. Nearly $1.5 million of those taxes ended up in city coffers.

“It’s an extremely large segment of the business dollar, and it’s a compounding dollar,” said Phil Bradley, the Lawrence-based director of the Kansas Licensed Beverage Assn. “The dollars spent on the hospitality industry in Lawrence are on locally owned, family-owned businesses.”

Bradley, a former member of the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission, has been tracking both the downtown and smoking issues closely.

He said City Hall had good intentions: protecting the retail “mix” of downtown, encouraging good health for business patrons and employees. But commissioners, he said, may not be aware how their actions could affect “hospitality industry” businesses.

“My grandfather used to say that what you see depends entirely on where you sit,” Bradley said. “They’re coming from different backgrounds, not small service-industry backgrounds.”

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‘A party scene’

Commissioner Mike Rundle said that what he sees — a growing number of drinking establishments downtown, combined with a diminishing number of retail stores — was cause for action.

“It’s one of the things constituents talk about all the time: having downtown be a place where all segments of the community feel welcome and not just be a downtown party scene,” Rundle said.

He added that a smoking ban had been successfully adopted in other cities; that hasn’t created “too much trouble,” he said.

“I don’t see the Bottleneck, or The Granada or Abe & Jake’s going out of business for lack of demand,” Rundle said, ticking off the names of three downtown Lawrence drinking establishments.

Bar owners disagree. They say a smoking ban has led to a drop in business and even the shutting down of some bars in cities where a ban has been adopted.

Proponents of a smoking ban, though, point to a federal Centers for Disease Control study released last month that showed a smoking ban had little economic fallout in El Paso, Texas.

“The core issue is health in any work environment, not just restaurants and bars,” said Judy Keller, executive director of the American Lung Association of Kansas. “Environmental tobacco smoke is a threat to public health, and specifically employee health.”

Lawrence bar owners are skeptical.

“Downtown without hospitality is a mall,” Boulter said. “Lawrence, really, is a village. Coffee shops, bars, they help make a village.”