By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — Representatives of Bentonville-based Walmart are scheduled to appear before the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board this week to seek permission to sell beer and wine at stores in Fayetteville and Mountain Home.
The world’s largest retailer is appealing ABC Director Michael Langley’s decisions to deny its applications for beer and wine permits at Walmart Supercenters on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and North Mall Avenue in Fayetteville, a Walmart Neighborhood Market on East Citizens Drive in Fayetteville and a Walmart Supercenter on Walmart Drive in Mountain Home.
The board is scheduled to consider the Mountain Home application on Wednesday and the Fayetteville applications on Thursday.
Walmart also has applied for a beer and wine permit for a store in Morrilton. Langley said he will deny that application this week because of opposition from local law enforcement officials.
The permits Walmart is seeking would allow sales of beer and “small-farm” wines, which are made by wineries that produce 250,000 gallons of wine or less per year. Beer and wine are currently sold at 34 Walmart stores in the state and at Walmart’s Little Rock Sam’s Club.
Sam’s Club in Fayetteville operates a liquor store that is separated by a wall from the main store.
If the board decides to approve a beer and wine permit for any of Walmart’s Fayetteville stores, Walmart will become the first grocery store in the city to offer alcohol for sale on its shelves.
Three convenience stores in the city have permits to sell alcohol, all of them granted this year. On Thursday, the board is scheduled to hear an appeal of Langley’s denial of a beer permit for another Fayetteville convenience store, Crossover Corner.
Walmart competitor Target is seeking beer and small-farm wine permits for stores in Little Rock, Fort Smith and Fayetteville.
Walmart says it is responding to public demand.
“Our customers have told us they would like to be able to buy beer and wine in a convenient, one-stop shopping experience at our three Fayetteville stores,” a statement on Walmart’s Community Action Network Web site read today.
Langley denied permits for the Fayetteville stores after receiving letters of opposition from Fayetteville Police Chief Greg Tabor, state Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, local church leaders and area residents.
Opponents say that with a large population of college students, Fayetteville does not need more outlets for alcohol sales.
“Please keep in mind that each additional outlet afforded a permit lessens our ability to adequately police all of them with respect to our resources,” Tabor wrote in a letter to ABC.
City Alderman Robert Ferrell has written a letter to ABC expressing support for the applications.
Of all of Walmart’s applications pending with ABC, the Mountain Home application has received the most opposition from area residents. Dozens of letters expressing opposition had been received at ABC’s Little Rock office by today, and employees said they were still opening letters late this afternoon.
Walmart previously applied for a beer and wine permit for its Mountain Home store in 2002 but withdrew the application in the face of local opposition, including opposition from then-Mayor Joe Dillard.
By this afternoon no public officials had notified ABC of opposition to the new application for the Mountain Home store.
