Business as usual one year after Municipal smoking ban implemented

Ken Smith/Turnagain Times Laura Sweeney, a former smoker and bartender for five years at the Sunrise Inn in Cooper Landing, enjoys working in the smoke free environment. Starting May 24 the owner, Mary Louise Molenda, banned smoking in the bar and restaurant. The Kenai Borrough, unlike Anchorage and Juneau, does not have an ordinance mandating no smoking in restaurants and bars.

By Rachel Drinkard
Turnagain Times Correspondent

A year after the smoking ban in the Municipality of Anchorage went into effect, nobody in the Girdwood area seems all that affected.
“I think it’s been a lateral move for everybody,” said Chair Five owner Spike Farley. “We have fewer smoking customers, but more non-smoking customers, so it all worked out.”
Chair Five’s bar manager, Gretchen Bell, agreed. “I’ve only had two people complain about the ban in the last year,” Bell said. “Some people don’t realize we’re part of the Anchorage Municipality, so what applies there applies here, too. The biggest problem we have is keeping people far enough away from the door. Everyone seems to want to stand on the porch.”
While the smoking ban, implemented last year on July 1, forced a couple of bars and restaurants in Girdwood and surrounding areas to go non-smoking, at least one Cooper Landing restaurant owner is tired of waiting for her own local government to take similar action.
“There hasn’t been any real call for it (smoking ban) at the borough level,” said Kenai Borough Assembly President, Grace Merkes. “I’m sure some of the non-smokers would support an ordinance, but so far there hasn’t seemed to be any problems with individual property owners making their own decisions on the matter.”
And that’s just what Mary Louise Molenda, owner of the Sunrise Inn in Cooper Landing, did.
“I waited for years for the [Kenai] borough to do something and they never did,” said Molenda. “So ultimately, I just decided it was my call, and I made it. Molenda banned smoking in the bar and restaurant this year on May 24.
“It was brought up by some employees during a dart tournament,” said Sunrise Inn bartender Laura Sweeney, a former smoker. “It was so smoky, it was disgusting.”
Molenda said it was a difficult decision because 50 percent of her customers were smokers and 50 percent were not. “But my employees had been begging me to go non-smoking for years,” she said, “and I was tired of the bar being so stinky all the time.”
As for Sweeney, this is her fifth summer working at the Sunrise Inn and she is thankful to be able to work in a smoke-free environment.
“It makes a huge difference,” she said. “My eyes aren’t as itchy, and my throat isn’t as raspy after work.”
The Sunrise Inn joins the Princess Lodge and Trail Lake Lodge in Cooper Landing as privately owned businesses with no smoking allowed. Popular Cooper Landing road house, Gwin’s Lodge, still allows smoking in the bar and restaurant.
“I’ve seen a few new people that come in now that didn’t before because of the smoking,” said Molenda, “but it’s really too early to tell if we’ll see any other impact or whether or not it’s keeping people that used to come in out.”
“I think that people that didn’t come into the bar before because of the smoke, will come in now,” Sweeney added.
While no longer welcome to sit at the bar with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other, Molenda has addressed smoker’s needs by upgrading the outside deck and turning it into a beer garden. Several Girdwood restaurants, including The Silvertip Grill, which was a non-smoking restaurant even before the municipal ban, have taken similar measures. Girdwood restaurants Maxine’s and Jack Sprat have also been working on improvements for their outdoor seating areas.
While Girdwood and Cooper Landing both seem relatively unaffected by their respective smoking “solutions” either government enforced or self-enforced, some bar and restaurant owners are still up in arms one year after the ban took affect (six months later a ban was implemented in Juneau 2, 2008).
A hand full of owners and managers in both cities have reported business being down between 20 and 50 percent as recently as last month, yet patrons continue to have mixed feelings, with those for and against smoking bans split down the middle—smokers still want to be able to smoke, and non-smokers prefer to keep it outside.
Despite the on-going controversy surrounding smoking bans, a recent study by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services reports a nearly 20 percent decrease in smokers state-wide since 1996. While the study showed the biggest decrease in smoking to be among Alaska Native youth, a large drop showed in women and adults, as well. Could some of that be due to these smoking bans? Perhaps, but with new reports coming out every day showing more dire consequences of second-hand smoke and the affects on smokers themselves, maybe leaving this particular habit at the door isn’t such a bad idea.
Either way you cut it, the bartenders in town don’t seem particularly worried.
“The bottom line is that Girdwood is a drinking town,” said Bell. “It would take a lot more than us going non-smoking for it to start affecting business.”