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Fili's Pizza Drops Liquor Store Application

Proposition 1 on the 2019 Bethel municipal ballot asks voters if they would like to return Bethel to local option status and limit alcohol licenses to restaurants and eating places. Fili's Pizza is the only Bethel restaurant with an alcohol license and wo
Dean Swope
/
KYUK

Fili’s Pizza has dropped its application to turn its restaurant into a liquor store.

Bethel City Council issued a protestof the license in February, mainly because of the site’s location. The pizzeria sits across the street from a halfway house and a cemetery, down the street from a 4-H teen center, and near Pinky’s Park, Bethel’s largest recreational area. Also, the landscape surrounding Fili’s is bushy and wooded and unsafe for first responders, according to Council members.

That leaves four applications still competing for Bethel’s third and final liquor store license.

The Bethel City Council has already protested one of those applications: Cezary Maczynski's proposal to turn his auto body shop into a liquor store.

The Council will consider protesting two more applications at its meeting on Tuesday: one for the Tundra Liquor Cache submitted by Steve Chung to turn Ed's Automotive on Hoffman Road into a liquor store, and the other from the Alaska Commercial Company to add a liquor store by the river on Bridge Avenue.

Alaska Commercial Company is also applying to add a liquor store to its main location on Ridgecrest Drive. The Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board has not yet notified the City of Bethel of this fourth application.

Walter Pickett, General Manager of the Alaska Commercial Company, says that of their two applications, AC would prefer the location at its store on Ridgecrest Drive.

Correction: The City of Bethel has received notice from the Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board of AC's liquor store application for 1110 Bridge Avenue but not for the AC main store on Ridgecrest Drive.

Anna Rose MacArthur served as KYUK's News Director from 2015-2022.