LEWISTON – The city won’t approve new liquor licenses downtown for another month, councilors agreed Tuesday.

The City Council extended a moratorium on new liquor licenses downtown for another 90 days at their regular meeting Tuesday. That should let City Administrator Jim Bennett and his staff find ways to encourage a better class of drinking establishments.

But Bennett said he planned to be back with a plan in one month.

“Rather than rush something through, we wanted to give ourselves time to come up with the right proposal,” Bennett said. “In 30 to 45 days, the moratorium should be gone.”

Councilors enacted the moratorium in November, and it’s scheduled to end on Feb. 12. Councilors said at the time they wanted to find a way to clean up downtown drinking establishments.

Bennett suggested the city create different categories for downtown liquor licenses – restaurants, restaurants with entertainment, function halls, nightclubs and large nightclubs. Restaurants with or without entertainment and function halls would be allowed anywhere throughout the downtown.

Nightclubs are hard to deal with, however.

“We’ve heard loud and clear from councilors that they want those establishments regulated, but there was no clear idea how,” Bennett said. “Some suggested limiting the number of nightclubs downtown, while others suggested letting competition clean things up.”

Bennett said staff had some ideas, but needed more time.

Two councilors, Ward 1’s Stavros Mendros and Ward 7 Normand Rousseau, said they couldn’t agree with expanding the moratorium.

“If there are businesses out there now waiting for us to act, we can’t delay,” Mendros said. “I think the ball is in our court. We need to move along and do something.”

The council also extended a liquor license moratorium in outlying urban areas. According to Bennett, restaurants would be allowed in those areas but not nightclubs. That would require Planning Board approval and would add another two weeks to the moratorium.

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