What's the right number of liquor licenses for the North End?

The North End has far more liquor licenses by area than any other neighborhood - about 48 licenses for every 0.1 square miles of land; 96 liquor licenses in total. It even beats out the tiny Leather District which has seven liquor licenses crammed into a space smaller than some building footprints.

The North End has more liquor licenses per square mile than any other neighborhood

Of the 96 liquor licenses in the North End, nine are retail licenses and the remaining 87 are for restaurants. 32 of the restaurant licenses are for all alcohol while 55 have a beer/wine or beer/wine/cordial restriction.

Save for Downtown and the Seaport (both outliers when it comes to residents per area), the North End also has the most liquor licenses per resident.

I built this map which helps visualize where the liquor licenses are:

Red = pouring all alcohol, Lighter red = pouring restricted, Blue = retail, Green = BYOB!

We all know that the North End has a lot of restaurants. They are a vital part of the fabric of our community. Why do I bother to quantify and visualize all this then? Because I'd like to have some sort of baseline to judge change against.

The Neighborhood Council and Residents Association regularly rubber stamp liquor license applications. Both groups have supported at least ten upgraded and two net new licenses in the past few months. But at the same time, both groups lament the negative affects that the restaurants have on quality of life for residents.

Just a few decades ago, there was an order of magnitude fewer pouring licenses in the North End. Was that too few? Are there too many now?

I'm not sure, but I'd like to see both groups use data to form opinions and policy rather than assess each application in a vacuum.

What's the right number of liquor licenses for the North End?

Sources:

• Neighborhood Boundaries and size: https://data.boston.gov/dataset/bpda-neighborhood-boundaries
• Section 12 licenses: https://data.boston.gov/dataset/liquor-licenses
• Population: https://data.boston.gov/dataset/neighborhood-demographics and https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/Massachusetts/Boston/Leather-District/Population