South Buffalo voters will decide at the polls Tuesday whether the township should allow expanded alcohol sales.
A referendum on the May 20 primary ballot is something of a do-over. A 2021 measure passed, but was ultimately voided by the state Liquor Control Board because it focused solely on the RIDC Armstrong Innovation Park.
This time, the ballot question covers all of South Buffalo Township.
Beer distributors, breweries and distilleries are currently permitted in the Armstrong County township, population 2,700.
The referendum, if passed, would allow gas stations, restaurants and hotels to sell alcohol as well. The township currently lacks all three (aside from one pizza shop), in large part because restrictions on alcohol make doing business there unattractive, according to Township Supervisor Joe Charlton.
“The highest priority is to have a gas station right off Route 28,” he added.
Charlton, who supports the measure, was a leading advocate for the 2021 attempt.
Officials in rural South Buffalo have hitched their development hopes to the RIDC-backed park along Route 128. While it hosts a few businesses and the township offices, the goal is leverage an incoming 60-home development to attract retailers and boost tax revenue. A recently built playground and plans to relocate the police station there also speak to a vision of the park as a downtown, of sorts.
“You got a housing plan going in, the next logical step behind that is businesses, restaurants, gas stations and, pie in the sky in the future, maybe a hotel,” Charlton said.
As of January, 677 of Pennsylvania’s 2,560 municipalities have laws that limit or prohibit alcohol sales. That’s just over a quarter of communities restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages, often based on bans put into place shortly after the federal government lifted Prohibition in 1933.
South Buffalo has been at least a partly dry town since 1947. The tiny Westmoreland County borough of New Florence, where voters will face a similar question Tuesday, banned retail beer and liquor sales in the 1930s.
