[Source: Tom Jenney, central Phoenix resident and Arizona director for Americans for Prosperity, My Turn column, Arizona Republic, June 4, 2008] — On April 30, the Arizona chapter of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law group, won its case in defense of the San Tan Flats Steakhouse. The Western-style bar and grill had been locked in a two-year legal battle with Pinal County regulators, who tried to use a 1960s dance-hall ordinance to stop patrons from dancing on an outdoor patio. The San Tan Flats case reminded many of the 1984 Kevin Bacon movie Footloose in which teens in a puritanical rural town fought for the right to dance. The bad guys in the San Tan Flats case — the supervisors and bureaucrats of Pinal County — were not moralists. They were regulatory tyrants who were zealous in enforcing a pointless statute.
Unfortunately, Phoenix has its own example of Footloose-style regulatory tyranny. The victim in this instance was one of downtown’s great treasures, the MacAlpine’s Soda Fountain at Seventh Street and Oak. Founded in 1928, MacAlpine’s has served Phoenix over the decades as a pharmacy, a soda fountain, a restaurant, and an antique shop. In 2003, in an effort to save the business, owners Cary and Monica Heizenrader began offering swing dances on weekend nights. Swing enthusiasts and their families could come to MacAlpine’s, have a meatloaf dinner, order unlimited egg-cream sodas, and dance to the big-band sounds of the 1930s and ’40s. No smoking, no booze — just old-fashioned family fun.
The MacAlpine’s swing dances brought people from all over the Valley and added a rare bit of life to the normally moribund downtown Phoenix night scene. My wife and I came in once on a Friday night and saw about 50 people: guys in zoot suits and Charlie Chaplin hats and girls in vintage outfits. There was a 3-year old girl in a poodle skirt, and 90-year-old man who had been a world-class swing dancer. For a half-hour, a young woman taught the group some Charleston moves, and for the rest of the evening, everybody danced what they knew (which for me was not much). One couple we talked to had come all the way from Tucson just to dance.
Unfortunately, the Phoenix city government eventually got in the way. In 2004, a disgruntled former tenant dug through city statutes and accused the restaurant of operating a dance hall without a permit. The city bureaucracy agreed and issued a cease-and-desist order, telling the Heizenraders that they would have to install a $75,000 sprinkler system just to qualify for a permit — and there was no guarantee that the city would issue a permit. The possible penalties for non-compliance included arrest, $2,500 fines per infraction and even jail time. MacAlpine’s did not need extra fireproofing equipment. The Heizenraders did not allow smoking and they already operated a full-service kitchen. But the city would not listen to reason and shut down the swing dances. When the Heizenraders said they might lose their business, a city official suggested that they open a dollar store.
Despite its nightmarish encounter with the Phoenix bureaucracy, MacAlpine’s has survived — and thrived — on the growing strength of its lunchtime business. Its adjacent antiques store is doing well. Of course, we will never know how successful the dances would have been. Perhaps swing dancing was fated to become less popular. But if MacAlpine’s wanted to try holding swing dances, it had the right to try. And the culture of Phoenix is poorer because of the city’s heavy-handed regulations. As Phoenix politicians continue in their endless quest to revive downtown business and create a hip nightlife, the most important thing they can do is to keep the city bureaucracy out of the way.
Downtown Voices Coalition 