The Real Fight Behind Davis's Sidewalk Beer Debate

Chris Ringenbach, co-owner of Hellbender Burritos, told Country Roads: "If people are waiting for a table, just being able to step outside with their beer, it'd be nice. It frees up a little space for us."

The suggestion sounds almost too small to argue about. A cup of beer. A sidewalk. A few extra minutes outside instead of packed against the counter waiting for a table. But when Cindy Robeson, co-owner of Stumptown Ales, brought a proposal to the Davis town council this spring asking to create a downtown district where adults could carry a drink outdoors, it turned into one of the more revealing conversations this town has had about itself in years.

About 40 business owners, service workers, and residents packed a special council meeting to weigh in. That's a big crowd for a town Davis's size, and it wasn't there because anyone thought outdoor drinking was going to remake William Avenue overnight. It was there because the question underneath the question was bigger: what kind of downtown is Davis actually building, and who gets to decide.

The Meeting That Filled the Room

The proposal itself was fairly narrow. Alcohol would stay inside a defined downtown area, served only by participating licensed businesses in marked cups, the kind of setup other small towns have used to let foot traffic move between a brewery, a restaurant, and a shop without losing the drink in hand. Robeson pitched it as a practical fix for a town that's outgrown its own seating.

The room didn't split along a clean line so much as along who has something to sell out of a tap. Ringenbach backed it. So did Robeson, obviously. Matt Marcus, manager of Blackwater Bikes, dismissed the idea that a cup of beer downtown would bring back anything resembling the rowdier days of Davis's past. Tucker County Sheriff Jake Kopec, who didn't attend the meeting, has said he doesn't have a problem with the plan.

On the other side sat Michael Goss, co-owner of Sirianni's Cafe, who raised the Blackwater 100, the off-road motorcycle race that ran through Davis in the 1980s and into the 1990s and left the town with a reputation for chaos it spent decades trying to shed. Shaena Crossland, owner of Sister Witches Crafting Company, one of the downtown shops that doesn't sell alcohol, put the stakes plainly in remarks reported by Country Roads.

"I think if we implemented something like that right now, when we are still trying to build all this other infrastructure, that's going to seriously degrade the integrity of the town and put people at risk."

Emerald Tree Boutique, another non-alcohol business downtown, voiced the same hesitation. And Davis resident Mandy DelSignore, quoted by Country Roads, said: "You can't guarantee your customers are going to drink responsibly." Robeson, quoted by Country Roads, pushed back hard on that framing: "People are not going to carry around bottles of vodka in their backpack, and just buy a cup and say, 'Great, now I can drink on the street all I want.' I think you all are really underestimating what people are capable of."

Two Versions of Growth

Here's what makes this more than a zoning footnote. Goss wasn't reaching for a random cautionary tale when he brought up the Blackwater 100. That race is the closest thing Davis has to a cultural memory of what happens when the town gets a reputation it didn't choose for itself, a decade of visitors who came for the spectacle rather than the place.

The Davis that exists now was built as something close to the opposite of that. The town's own account of its recent history describes an economic turn away from timber, trapping, and coal toward outdoor recreation, artisan shops, live music, and craft beer, a slower kind of growth built business by business rather than event by event. Stumptown Ales itself is part of that story. Founded in 2015 in a renovated storefront on William Avenue, it won West Virginia Brewery of the Year in 2017 and helped put Davis on the map for a very different reason than a motorcycle race ever did.

So when Goss and Marcus argue about whether a cup of beer downtown risks becoming another Blackwater 100, they're really arguing about which version of Davis's growth the town trusts more, the one it's spent a decade building quietly, or the one it spent just as long trying to outrun.

Who's Weighing In

The businesses expressed different views of the proposal:

In favor: Stumptown Ales, Hellbender Burritos, and Blackwater Bikes.

Against or hesitant: Sirianni's Cafe, Sister Witches Crafting Company, and Emerald Tree Boutique.

Undecided, watching closely: the town council itself. Council member Jennie Helmick had already voiced opposition when the idea first came up, and at the spring meeting she also said the process felt rushed. Mayor Al Tomson opened the meeting by making clear nothing had been settled. "It's not a done deal, nobody said it's going to happen." By the end of the discussion, the council had mostly listened rather than weighed in, and signaled it might not act on the idea at all this year.

That's where the proposal stood as of the most recent public meeting on record. No vote, no ordinance, no defined boundary map. Just a town still deciding, out loud, what it wants William Avenue to feel like.

What Happens by September 25

The timing matters more than it might seem. Leaf Peepers Festival, Tucker County's largest annual event, lands September 25 through 27 this year, the last full weekend of September as it is every fall. Leafy's Parade, a craft show and vendor market, the Run For It 2k and 5k, a classic car show, live music, and an Oktoberfest tent pouring from the area's local breweries will all fill downtown Davis over those three days, the same stretch of sidewalk this entire debate has been about.

If the council had moved fast, this would have been the test case, the first weekend Davis tried out an outdoor drinking district under the heaviest foot traffic the town sees all year. Instead, Leaf Peepers arrives this year the same way it always has, under the existing rules, while the DORA conversation sits unresolved in the background.

That's not nothing. It means the businesses on both sides of this argument will be standing shoulder to shoulder all weekend, pouring drinks, selling crafts, running the Oktoberfest tent, watching how a town this size handles a few thousand extra visitors without the new rule they've been debating. Whatever the council decides next, it will decide it having watched one more Leaf Peepers weekend play out the old way first.

The Town Center Everyone's Watching

What struck me reading through the meeting coverage wasn't the disagreement itself. Small towns argue about parking, noise, and what belongs downtown all the time. What stood out was how much everyone in that room, on both sides, agreed on the thing underneath the argument: Davis has spent real time and real money building a downtown that people choose to visit for the right reasons, and nobody wants to be the one who let that slip.

That's a good problem for a town to have. It means the debate over a cup of beer isn't really about the beer. It's about a place that's grown enough to have something worth protecting, and is taking its time deciding how to protect it.

I don't have a stake in how the council votes, if it ever does. But I do spend a lot of time in Davis, Oakland, and the towns around Deep Creek Lake, and I always want to know what's actually being talked about at the bar, not just what's on the festival flyer. If you're curious about what's changing downtown, or anything else shifting in this stretch of Maryland and West Virginia, I'm easy to find. Chef's Edge Real Estate is where I keep track of it all, one town meeting at a time.