While its name might suggest Brookfield Zoo Chicago falls solely in Brookfield, the easternmost portions of the zoological park actually lay within Riverside. As a result of the overlap, the village has altered its liquor code to enable the zoo to expand its liquor sales.
At the village board’s Aug. 15 meeting, trustees approved updating Riverside’s liquor code to create a new kind of liquor license and issuing one of those licenses to the SSA Group, which handles the zoo’s concessions operations, including the sale of food, drink and retail merchandise. While the board considered both motions separately, trustees did not discuss them.
The SSA Group first obtained a liquor license from Riverside in 2020 when the village board granted it a Class B-Special license, which allowed the zoo to sell beer and wine for on-site consumption at specific areas within its premises. The annual fee for this kind of license is $10,500.
According to agenda packet documents from the village board meeting, the SSA Group had reached out to village staff about the zoo’s plan to “expand [its] liquor operations” to the Discovery Center, on the eastern side of the park toward its north entrance, where it aims to sell alcohol “for off-premises consumption, including sampling or tasting promotions.”
While the Discovery Center is mostly within Brookfield, “A very, very small piece of [it] would fall in Riverside, triggering the need for us to give [the SSA Group] a liquor license,” Village Clerk Ethan Sowl told trustees.
However, the Class B-Special license Riverside had issued does not permit the sale of alcohol for off-premises consumption, meaning the village did not have an applicable license it could issue to the SSA Group to allow the zoo to expand its liquor sales.
Now, following board approval, the village has renamed Class B-Special licenses to Class B licenses and created an add-on Class B-1 license that will allow the zoo to sell beer and wine at the Discovery Center in accordance with the zoo’s other planned provisions. The SSA Group can choose not to renew the add-on liquor license if the zoo changes course in the future and stops selling alcohol at the Discovery Center.
The yearly fee for the new kind of license is $450, bringing the SSA Group’s annual total for both licenses to $10,950.
Immediately after passing the ordinance to amend Riverside’s liquor code, trustees passed another ordinance to authorize the issuance of a newly created Class B-1 liquor license to the SSA Group.
