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Politics & Government

Minneapolis Liquor Laws Have a Long and Unique History

Southwest played a major role in how booze and the city co-mingled

Anyone who has lived in Minneapolis for some time, especially southwest Minneapolis, knows that buying liquor is not without its inconviniences. South of Lake Street, for example, there are only two liquor stores, making last-minute beer runs a real hassle. 

But did you know that this seemingly odd fact of life is a direct result of controversy, seedy politics, and organized crime?

To understand today’s liquor climate requires a look at the history of Minneapolis and booze.

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Boxing In The Saloons

In the mid 1880s, new immigrants and older settlers were grappling over the role liquor should play in the city. The mayor was George A. Pillsbury (of the famed milling family) and he and a newly arrived group of Scandinavian immigrants were teetotalers. They butted heads with people of Irish, German and Polish descent who liked to hoist a few.

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A compromise was reached and the city set up what became known as the Liquor Patrol Limits (LPL). These LPLs worked like today's zoning codes, but instead of regulating height or land use, they demarcated where liquor could be bought and consumed. In other words, this is where liquor stores (off-sale) and bars (on-sale) were legal. 

The term Liquor Patrol Limits came about because the police in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries and before the advent of motorized vehicles, were out on foot patrol. With the Limits, the city demarcated "no-go" zones for these beat cops, formalizing a decision not to enforce anti-saloon laws in certain parts of town. In 1884, the council approved a plan that restricted saloons to the city’s core along the riverfront and parts of two neighborhoods. One of the neighborhoods was northeast Minneapolis, which had a strong contingent of Poles, Irish and Germans, and the other was Cedar-Riverside. The 1884 limits extended down Cedar Avenue South to Franklin Avenue. 

The one exception was there could be establishments outside the LPLs in which it was permissible to sell or serve 3.2 percent alcohol beer.

By the late 1880s, there were over 225 saloons inside the limits.

Prohibition came and the saloons and liquor stores were shut down.  Once repealed in the early 1930s, the LPL still stayed in effect.  

Minneapolis was expanding in terms of its geographically size, especially around the much-covered property near places like Lakes Calhoun and Harriet. But these new homeowners shared their predecessors' low opinion of bars and liquor stores, and the LPLs remained firmly in place.

To get a liquor license, one had to curry favor with an alderman, as city council members were then known, who represented a ward of the city within the LPLs. The alderman, if so inclined, would then push for the license with fellow city council members.

Mobed-Up Minneapolis

Of course, if you were Isadore “Kid Cann” Blumenfeld, you took a somewhat different approach.

Blumenfeld was a Jewish-American organized crime figure based in Minneapolis, and possibly the most notorious mobster in the history of the state. Born in 1900 in Romania, he came to the U.S. with his family at age two. A tough kid growing up on the Northside of town — then, as now, the city's ghetto — he got into petty crime as a teenager and young man. When prohibition came, he and his brothers were soon big-time bootleggers. In this capacity, they sold illegal booze to Al Capone in Chicago and the Genovese Crime Family in New York. When prohibition ended, Kid Cann quickly switched gears. Minneapolis ordinances only granted one liquor license per person. Blumenfeld controlled several liquor stores simply by obtaining licenses with family and friends who would be listed as the official license holder.

It is estimated that at one time he controlled 10 liquor joints.

Of course, during this time, he lived on a prosaic stretch of Oakland Avenue in south Minneapolis.

He was convicted of violating the Mann Act in 1959, for bringing a woman in from Chicago for a prostitution ring he operated. After a short prison term, retired to Miami Beach where he and Meyer Lansky, the infamous financial mastermind behind the Mafia, operated a real estate empire. He was involved in organized crime in Miami Beach and Havana, Cuba until his death in 1981. He is buried in the Adath Jeshurun Cemetery along France Avenue in Edina.

About the time Blumenfeld was staring at the inside of a prison cell, the LPL were being pushed further out. In south Minneapolis they were extended to Franklin Avenue. There were also attempts to have any new liquor stores be municipally owned and operated. One advocate of this was the 13th Ward alderman, Norman Stewart.

People in the ward, however, were leery that this could be the start of booze in their neighborhoods and almost no resident wanted that. 

As the Sixties took hold, urban renewal and freeways were on the scene. People living in the 13th ward were going to other parts of the city, or most likely into neighboring Edina and Richfield to buy liquor. Many politicians and business leaders felt things needed to loosen up.

In 1974, a special referendum to eliminate the liquor patrol limits was put before the voters of Minneapolis. Approximately 60 percent of them voted in favor of the elimination. In theory, there was no place in the city that was off limits to liquor stores or bars. 

There were soon allegations of political contributions leading to the favoring of certain contributors gaining favor in licensing applications. While the LPL were extinct, the city put on overall limit of 200 on liquor stores, greatly restricted license transfers and gave individual council members less say in who received a license

On-sale establishments in the southwest part of the city — especially away from the Lake and Hennepin district — are only allowed to serve to wine and beer.

While the restrictions are far more liberal than they were 100 or even 50 years ago, the city will keep a tight rein on its liquor laws.

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