This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Sometimes Utah liquor laws are enough to drive someone to drink.

That's the case, at least, as lawmakers have gone from trying to finally get rid of the nonsensical Zion Curtain to now teetering on the brink of creating something much worse.

How bad has it become? At this point, the legislation is more likely to cost many restaurants thousands of dollars, possibly tens of thousands, and potentially drive some out of business altogether rather than make any meaningful progress.

The biggest issue — although certainly not the only one — is the truly terrible trade-off restaurants are being given. They can live with the 7-foot-tall Zion Curtain designed to keep children from seeing drinks being prepared. Or they can take what's behind Door No. 2: The Zion Moat, a 15-foot buffer around a restaurant bar where patrons under 21 years would be banned from sitting.

Once again, lawmakers are treating alcohol like it is radioactive. But it's the restaurants who could get nuked.

Take Purple Sage, for instance. Travis Axtell opened his Park City restaurant in 2003 in one of the oldest structures in town, the old Rocky Mountain Bell Telephone Building, erected in 1892, before Utah was even a state.

The building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is similar to a shotgun shack, 14 feet wide and 80 feet long with a bar running along one side of the rustic little eatery.

"The backbone of our business is families on ski trips," Axtell said. "I've been a responsible owner. We haven't had issues. It's a restaurant. We don't encourage drinking, we don't do late nights. I'm a food person. … If we have to eliminate even 10 feet around that bar, that eliminates half of my business. I have nowhere to put those families, and we want families."

Axtell's restaurant was one of more than 400 that didn't have to build a Zion Curtain because it existed before the law was enacted in 2009.

Under the proposed bill, Purple Sage and hundreds of other restaurants would lose their grandfathered status and would either have to build a Zion Curtain — which would mean completely gutting his restaurant — or go with the business-killing 15-foot moat.

His business is certainly not alone.

Look at Pallet near Pioneer Park, where the large wooden bar at the west end of the restaurant would mean at least two-thirds of the space would be off-limits to anyone under age 21.

Or Hub & Spoke, a popular little farm-to-table restaurant in Salt Lake City, where families would be banished from at least half the establishment.

Or Squatters, the renowned downtown brewery and restaurant that would lose about half of its space where patrons with children and young adults can now dine.

Or there's Manoli's, a cozy new Greek restaurant in Salt Lake City, that would lose four tables and have its online reservation system thrown into complete chaos.

Or restaurants that don't have a Zion Curtain can opt for the expense and inconvenience of building one.

And just like that, we end up in the exact opposite place where the discussion started. Instead of getting rid of the Zion Curtain, hundreds of restaurants would lose their grandfathered status and would have to build more Zion Curtains or try to enforce a Zion Moat.

"I don't think they understand; there are small businesses like mine that this would really impact quite substantially," Axtell said. "You take a successful business and you just choke it, basically."

Clearly, somewhere during negotiations the concessions given to the anti-alcohol lobby — including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — completely swallowed up whatever tiny gain restaurants might have hoped to see.

And instead of making Utah's liquor laws less of a curiosity to outsiders, the bill would impose an embarrassing set of bizarre new hoops for restaurants.

Imagine coming to Utah from California with your 20-year-old child for a ski vacation and having to wait an hour for a table because your family isn't allowed to sit at any of the tables within 15 feet of the bar.

Or coming into the state for a business trip and having to have your identification scanned — as required in the new law — before you can be seated in the vicinity of the bar.

Bet that'll give you something to tell your friends about when you get home.

That's not to mention the new restrictions being forced on grocery stores and convenience stores — state licensing, training, inspections and limits on displays — that gain nothing in the process.

And it doesn't include Rep. Norm Thurston's bill that passed the House last week that would make Utah the first state in the country to slap drivers with a DUI if they are over a 0.05 blood alcohol level.

You can already hear the national media coverage.

The Utah Restaurant Association seems oblivious to the impacts and supports the liquor bill, selling out its members in the process. The Salt Lake Area Restaurant Association is not on board and its members overwhelmingly oppose the changes.

To their credit, lawmakers appear willing to listen. On Friday, House Majority Leader Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, the sponsor of the liquor bill, took a field trip to a handful of Salt Lake City area restaurants to see firsthand the impact of the Zion Moat.

If the message was received, there may still be time to fix the glaring problems in the legislation.

But if the current monstrosity is what qualifies as liquor reform — and I never thought I'd say this — Utah should keep the Zion Curtain.

Twitter: @RobertGehrke