Our View: Council feeds its craving for day traffic downtown

When is a bar not always a bar? When it serves lunch.

The Scottsdale City Council's historical lack of flag-waving support for downtown Scottsdale's nightclub district reversed itself Tuesday as members approved allowing Craftsman Court bars to extend their premises into sidewalks and even a portion of the street taken up by some head-in parking spaces. It should give a more pedestrian, sidewalk café look to the blocklong street between Third and Fifth avenues just west of Scottsdale Road that has been the site of the downtown New Year's Eve block party and other well-attended outdoor eat-and-drink events.

Three of the street's bars will get the extensions. As the Tribune's Brian Powell reported Wednesday, the council agreed, with a catch: You get an extension so long as you serve lunch and dinner.

Now, there's the historical lack of flag-waving we know and remember.

In recent years some council members cooled to the idea of new bars or approving changes to existing ones, and apparently a bar isn't so wild a place if it is also a grill. That is to say, a club sandwich with seasoned fries and ranch dressing soothes the savage breast.

The council thus furthers its longstanding desire for more daytime uses downtown. It's one of the only ways one can explain how members allowed one Craftsman Court bar to offer off-track betting on horse races (day) but rejected its application to offer wagering on dog races (night).

What could be known as the Al Fresco Compromise of 2008 appeals to the city's strange desire to intrude on the marketplace while allowing downtown bars to freely agree to a plan that lets them serve more customers in the hopes of making more money.