An effort to tweak Utah’s liquor laws is back on track after the bill was derailed late Tuesday over a disagreement about whether cities should be allowed to determine how close a bar or restaurant can be to a local park or playground.
Utah senators voted 24-2 on Wednesday afternoon to approve an updated version of the annual omnibus liquor bill, SB328, that leaves that deciding power up to the state. The night prior, the same senators rejected an earlier draft by a 15-13 vote that would have allowed cities to decide.
The bill now goes to the House for consideration. The 2025 legislative session ends late Friday.
On Wednesday, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, touted some of the less-controversial changes in the legislation. One in particular would let people include beer in their online grocery store orders that they later pick up in store parking lots. Under current law, shoppers have to leave their vehicle and enter the store to buy beer.
The sticking point Tuesday was a provision to change the state’s “proximity” law, which dictates that no liquor license holder — bar or restaurant — can have its front doors within a 600-foot walk from a park or playground.
When Stevenson shared the draft last week, it introduced a proximity law exemption for land the state is developing at Point of the Mountain in Draper, the former site of the Utah state prison. That exemption was similar to one lawmakers approved in 2024 for the “entertainment district” in downtown Salt Lake City, between the Delta Center and City Creek Center shopping complex.
By Monday, Stevenson had amended the language more broadly to let cities — not the state — decide what proximity laws should be in place. The Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee passed that draft on a 6-0 vote.
But in the 24 hours between Monday’s committee vote and Tuesday’s floor vote, the bill was amended three more times.
Along the way, a 0.35% increase to the state’s markup — what consumers pay Utah for hard liquor, above what the state pays wholesalers — was stripped out of the bill. That change, which was expected to raise $700,000 a year, was earmarked to help pay for inmate education programs.
On Tuesday night, Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, called the attempt to allow cities to determine proximity rules “a significant policy change,” one that “needs more vetting than we can give it today.” But Stevenson objected.
Handing control of proximity law to cities, Stevenson argued, supports multi-use developments, like what’s being proposed for Point of the Mountain and beyond. “I think you could see something like this, maybe, in Moab … in Park City, or even down in the St. George area,” Stevenson said.
“This would accommodate those [developments] without having to go through this every year, of going through the situation of trying to define an ‘entertainment district,’” Stevenson said.
The Senate rejected Stevenson’s argument Tuesday night. The version that passed Wednesday still retains the Point of the Mountain exception.
Sen. Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, questioned why the planned “The Point” development was receiving special treatment. “I think that if this is good economic business sense for that community, I think it would make economic business sense for every community,” Riebe said.
(Point of the Mountain State Land Authority) A rendering of a portion of the River-to-Range corridor that will be part of phase one of The Point, a redevelopment project in Draper.
“I don’t understand why we always have all these separate carve-outs,” Riebe added.
She pointed to the former Sizzler location near Sugar House Park as an example that could benefit from the broader proposal.
“There’s a park in Sugar House that would like to have a restaurant next to the park,” she said. “There are lots of places in the state of Utah that are struggling with having restaurants, because they have this proximity [rule] still in law.”
Riebe was one of two senators, both Democrats, to vote against the bill Wednesday.
Other changes the bill would make to Utah’s liquor law include:
• Allowing a so-called “straw test” in bars or restaurants — a common practice that typically involves mixologists dipping a small straw into a cocktail, pulling it out and tasting the tiny amount in the straw to ensure quality.
• Clarifying that the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services’ liquor commission can deny a license to a business if the applicant’s violation history warrants it. The 2024 liquor bill took that discretion away from the commission.
