Community Corner

Liquor License Opponents, Proponents Take Campaigns to Festival

The two camps broadcast their opposing messages only yards away from each other during Autumn in Moorestown Saturday.

Competing camps in the debate over liquor licenses set up shop just a few feet from each other on Main Street during Saturday’s .

Here, you had PREIT (Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust) president Joe Coradino and Jacob DerHagopian, chair of the economic development advisory committee, championing the lifting of Moorestown’s 100-year ban on liquor licenses to establish restaurants serving alcohol at the mall.

And then about 100 feet away, tables popped up in a storefront, you had Stanley Ralph and other members of the “no liquor license” crowd, distributing their information and spreading their own message to curious passersby.

“To me, it’s not ideological,” Ralph said of the issue, which has seemingly divided the town. “It’s about the stewardship of the town. For 100 years we haven’t had liquor licenses and we’ve prospered. There’s no reason we shouldn’t prosper in the future.”

Part of Ralph’s argument against the issuance of licenses centers on what he perceives as the legal impermissibility of the second referendum question, which would limit the sale of alcohol to the mall.

Question 2 is invalid, he said, so it’s really all about Question 1, “and Question 1 has no restriction.”

Ralph cited a detailed legal opinion posted on his group’s website—noliquorlicenses.com—as the basis for his argument. But DerHagopian and Coradino rejected their opponent’s legal stance—noting the opinion’s lack of a named author—insisting it’s completely legal to restrict alcohol sales to the mall.

Both sides said a number of people had stopped by their respective tables to ask questions and offer their support.

Coradino said he was somewhat surprised he hadn’t heard more from the opposition during with Moorestown residents, or during the festival.

“We’re beginning to feel the momentum swinging,” he said.

PREIT’s presence at Autumn in Moorestown was part of its ongoing public relations campaign, which has included appearances before the , Moorestown Rotary, the Collins Park neighborhood and last week’s call.

Asked whether a live, in-person public forum would be held before the vote on Nov. 8, Coradino stood in front of PREIT’s table, outstretched his arms to indicate the hundreds of people walking along Main Street and said, “Is this not public?”

The No Liquor activists appearance at the festival was more impromptu: They asked for a spot only days before, after they found out PREIT was going to be there.

Ralph said the group is a “grassroots leadership” whose goal is to “protect the town as you see it today.”

Rejecting the notion that the debate between the two camps is ideological, he said, “It more protects the town from the large interests that would find this town attractive.”

A hearing on Moorestown resident to block the referendums from the ballot will be held before Superior Court Judge Ronald Bookbinder at 2 p.m. Friday in courtroom 7C of the courts facility building in Mount Holly.


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