A group of residents living in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood are trying to prevent more bars and clubs from opening on a boisterous street near their homes using what’s becoming an outdated policy tool: a liquor license moratorium.

The Westminster Neighborhood Association, a group of homeowners clustered around 9th, S, and T streets NW in Shaw, is troubled with the rise in crime and believes the concentration of bars and clubs around the U Street Metro station is the root cause. So members asked D.C.’s Alcohol Beverage and Cannabis Administration (ABCA) to stop approving new liquor licenses for taverns and nightclubs on the 1900 block of 9th Street NW for at least three years.

If approved, the moratorium would not only restrict new licenses, but prevent existing business owners from transferring their licenses to another building within the zone. The proposal would allow for new restaurant licenses.

But many business owners on the block that some refer to as “Little Ethiopia” — because it’s been dominated by Ethiopian-owned businesses for years — feel blindsided and unfairly targeted. They oppose the moratorium, saying their businesses are being penalized for a problem plaguing the entire city.

“They want us out of here or something,” says Derege Zewdie, owner of the hookah bar MK Lounge and fast-casual restaurant Habesha Market & Carryout.

The Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis (ABC) Board is accepting public comment on the proposal through Friday. It’s unclear how soon after that the ABC Board will make a decision, but both business owners and residents are awaiting the result with bated breath.

Size (and the details) matter

Moratorium zones on liquor licenses are rare and increasingly unpopular. The zones in Dupont Circle and Georgetown were allowed to expire within the past decade, and a 2013 effort to add one on U Street failed. The Alcoholic Beverage and Cannabis (ABC) Board currently restricts licenses in just three areas: Langdon Park, Adams Morgan, and Glover Park, and Adams Morgan is likely on its way to easing its cap on bars.

The Westminster proposed moratorium also goes further than those others by adding the restriction on license transfers within the zone.

“This would be unprecedented,” says Richard Bianco, the attorney representing the owners of 18 impacted 9th Street businesses, including Zewdie.

Another reason 9th Street business owners are mobilizing against this moratorium zone is its small size. Other similar zones around the city are much larger, covering for example, a circle with a 600-foot radius in Langdon Park and one with an 1,800-foot radius in Adams Morgan. But the proposed moratorium in north Shaw would cover less than 400 linear feet, or a single block — and doesn’t even include every business there. Nellie’s Sports Bar, at the corner of 9th and U, for example, is not included.

The zone’s proposers wanted a larger moratorium zone that would’ve included The Dirty Goose on U Street and All Souls at 8th and T, but say their councilmember, Brianne Nadeau of Ward 1, wouldn’t support it.

Nadeau confirmed she wouldn’t support a larger one because the 1900 block of 9th has an outsized number of bars — 15 licensed taverns and one licensed nightclub — which leads to crowds there.

The councilmember has been against past efforts to implement a liquor license moratorium in the neighborhood, but sent a letter to ABCA in support of the neighborhood association’s 9th Street proposal. She says she changed her mind after exhausting other tools to address crime concerns, including the city’s nightlife task force, which sends various government agencies to U Street to respond to complaints and prevent future ones. Crime continues to be so bad that neighbors who never complain are now speaking up, she says.

“I acknowledge it’s not a quick fix,” Nadeau says of the Westminster proposal.

Who would be impacted?

Many of the business owners on the block have been in D.C. long enough to remember when Adams Morgan was a hub for Ethiopian businesses. They’ve taken cues from those businesses’ slow exodus from that neighborhood: many bought their buildings in Shaw to help ensure longevity, and they’ve adapted to cater to the demand for drinking and dancing in the neighborhood, the owners say.

Thomas Abebe, whose family owns the bar and restaurant Right Spot and the Sliced and Brewed pizza shop, have owned businesses on the block since 1991 — and survived the crime wave then. Abebe’s family first operated a grocery store, and he recalls how his mother installed outdoor lights to dissuade drug dealing outside the store at night. She also planted a garden to make the area more attractive, he says.

“We have been through a lot, a lot to make it change,” Abebe says. His family owns their buildings too, so he worries a moratorium will stunt growth for his business and others on the block.

Zewdie of MK Lounge and Habesha doesn’t know what he’ll do with a building he recently purchased at 1922 9th St. NW if the moratorium goes into effect. He planned either to move his lounge there from 1930 9th St NW once his lease expires next year or open a new bar there altogether. But under the proposed moratorium, he won’t be able to do either.

Moreover, the Shaw moratorium as proposed would not allow owners of the existing nightclub (DC9) and bars to increase capacity or extend their hours. Existing restaurants also wouldn’t be able to add entertainment. Bianco says all the regulations will strangle business on the block, which he adds should be a racial equity concern given that the moratorium would affect nearly exclusively African immigrant-owned businesses.

“I don’t know their motivation,” Bianco says of neighbors who petitioned for a moratorium. “Undeniably, it has a discriminatory impact regardless of intention.”

Members of Westminster Neighborhood Association emphasize that they are not targeting the area because of problems with specific owners but the overall increased crime.

“Race does not have anything to do with this,” says Leola Q. Smith, a founding member of the neighborhood association who is Black. “We’re talking about the number of over-concentrated clubs. Because the more clubs, the more people. And the more people, the more crimes.”

The police service area that includes this stretch has the most total reports of property and violent crime in all the city, according to the Metropolitan Police Department’s crime map. There have been fewer reported homicides compared to other parts of the District — with six so far this year, still double than the year prior — but a greater number of robberies and other property crime.

Over the summer, Smith almost got shot on the corner of 9th and Westminster streets after witnessing an attempted carjacking, she says. Her nephew was also robbed at gunpoint nearby around the same time, she adds. She thinks perpetrators take advantage of the crowds.

The neighbors say they fault policymakers for allowing a single block to have over a dozen establishments that together have the capacity to hold over 2,000 people, many who leave get intoxicated.

“It’s about a policy outcome that has created conditions that bring way too many people to too small of a place,” says Paul O’Neill, who’s lived in Shaw for 11 years and is a member of the neighborhood association. “Then the city is asked to respond, throwing money by the fistful for overtime for parking enforcement and police.”

The police commander for the area, James Boteler of the Third District, says the number of people who come to the U Street corridor on Friday and Saturday nights has noticeably increased compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly on the 1900 block of 9th Street. He says it’s led to disorder and violence, with large groups of drunk people fighting in the streets over something as trivial as double parking. Fights escalate when people carry guns, which is more common now, according to Boteler.

Boteler says he’s empathetic to 1900 block’s current bar owners who are just trying to make a living, but says he does not want any more bar or club openings there because police are tapped out. “It’s just anarchy on the 1900 block,” Boteler says.

Who’s to blame for the crime?

But the owners of multiple businesses on the 1900 block point the finger back at the authorities for creating the free-for-all on 9th Street — specifically the nightlife task force’s road closures between U and T streets, which are intended to prevent car accidents and traffic.

The pedestrian zone enables an unruly block party just outside their establishments, owners say, with street vendors illegally selling alcohol and other substances on the street. (Boteler says MPD does not have the authority to arrest or cite these street vendors.)

On a recent weekend night, as crowds spilled out onto the street near the U Street metro entrance, the 1900 block was blocked to traffic, and groups of people lingered in the road, chatting and smoking. Someone tried to sell pre-rolled joints inconspicuously to patrons he walked by. Not quite like Bourbon Street, although a few residential and commercial owners have compared the scene to Mardi Gras.

Business owners say they too are disturbed by the crime. “Our customers are the victims and we are the victims,” says Abebe of Right Spot and Sliced and Brewed.

He and other owners say they are doing what they can to make sure their patrons are safe: They have security plans and are enrolled in the police’s reimbursable detail officer program, which allows liquor licensees to hire off-duty officers. However, few if any of the six requested officers for Friday and Saturday nights show up, according to Alex Padro, the executive director of Shaw Main Streets, which coordinates the program for businesses. Abebe says a crime petitioners pinned on his business, a shooting outside of his establishment in June, was not committed by his customers and happened after hours.

That no business is taking at least partial responsibility for the crime frustrates Westminster Neighborhood Association members. They believe a moratorium zone will address what they see as a preponderance of bars that contributes to the chaos.

“They all raise their hands and say, ‘Not my problem, because our business hours are over,’” O’Neill says. “That’s completely irresponsible because those 2,500 people who patronize that block all leave at the same time.”

But the business owners wish their neighbors had been more willing to discuss the issue before they got to this point. But so far, neighbors haven’t approached them to discuss their moratorium, multiple owners say.

Westminster Neighborhood Association also acknowledges their interactions with the impacted businesses has been limited if not tense. The neighborhood association has protested the licenses of some establishments, including VIP Lounge when it tried to change its restaurant license to a tavern (which enables it to serve alcohol without serving food). Additional complaints around noise and trash have some business owners feeling like their neighbors just want them out of business and the increased crime is a convenient excuse.

Nadeau, the Ward 1 councilmember, does not blame any single business on the block for the crime. She says the moratorium isn’t intended to be a punishment but to maintain the current number of businesses while she tries to create a “community improvement district,” which would appoint a neighborhood board and safety ambassadors.

But some 1900 block street owners worry they won’t survive that long.