It may have been buried towards the bottom of a Post article this morning, but this little piece of news is sure to please some people:

In other action, the council approved an emergency bill that allows exceptions for businesses that are within 400 feet of a school, college or District-operated recreation area applying for liquor licenses. D.C. law prohibits such proximity, but the bill will allow exceptions for businesses in commercial areas.

It’s been a couple of months since we last wrote about this, so a little review is in order. Last November we reported on a nasty little battle brewing between Shiloh Baptist Church in Shaw and Vegetate, then a new, chic vegetarian restaurant that had set up shop on Ninth Street. Shiloh was none too happy with Vegetate’s plans to serve alcohol, pushing its members to attend Alcoholic Beverage Control Board meetings to protest the restaurant’s application — a move they repeated with Queen of Sheba, an Ethiopian restaurant nearby that was also seeking a liquor license. Vegetate’s liquor license was eventually turned down because the restaurant’s property line was within 400 feet of Seaton Elementary School, thus violating a District regulation prohibiting the granting of licenses to businesses within that distance of a school. Vegetate took their case to Council-member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who promised to explore writing an exception into the regulation for businesses in commercial areas.

And thus yesterday’s action on the matter. Council-member Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6) proposed the emergency legislation, known as the “Commercial Exception Clarification Amendment Emergency Act of 2006,” which stated as its purpose:

Several prospective alcoholic beverage license applications . . . await this technical correction to the code in commercially zoned areas where positive economic development is both welcomed and desired.

Though the legislation didn’t explicitly mention restaurants, Evans proposed an amendment that extended the exception to them.

We called Vegetate, and the best they could tell us was that they’re looking into it. After all, the measure was passed as emergency legislation, so in theory it would lapse after 90 days. And even if it does get written into law permanently, Vegetate and other restaurants in Shaw would still have to go before the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to justify their case — and there’s little doubt that Shiloh would be there to argue against it. But the measure indicates that the ball is back in Vegetate’s court, and they could be one step close to the liquor license they’ve longed for over the last year.