Peoria city leaders have blocked six Shell gas stations from selling package alcohol at their convenience stores.
City attorney Patrick Hayes said the move to deny the separate liquor license site applications was based, in part, on the operators’ failure to pay nearly $1 million in delinquent taxes and associated fines.
“They had been filing returns, but not making payments on the amounts due on a monthly basis, and would again pay in the last minute,” Hayes said. “In April this year, they stopped filing returns for all of the premises, and the city took action against them.”
As part of its consent agenda on Tuesday, the Peoria City Council followed the liquor commission’s recommendation to deny all six applications.
Hayes said the stations had amassed $131,000 in unpaid taxes before it stopped filing returns, and $800,000 in daily fines from April 1 through June 17 for those unpaid taxes.
With Hayes calling this a “unique” situation, council member Kiran Velpula stressed that Peoria should not be viewed as “anti-business.”
“As a city, we aim to make decisions that are more rational. Importantly, this denial should not be viewed as a discouragement for other businesses considering reaching out with applications in the future,” Velpula said.
“We should never take away the right of a business to come back and say, ‘I want to do that.’ So this entire exercise is to make a point that we are not being punitive on the businesses who wanted to extend their services, but we are very rational and balanced when we make the choice.”
The six convenience stores are located at 1108 W. Main, 1900 N. Knoxville, 4310 N. Knoxville, 710 W. Detweiller, 4709 N. Sterling, and 3903 W. Baring Trace. Hayes said all six facilities are now operated by Bobbye Singh, and are owned by a single corporate entity — Kentucky-based Axis Investments — despite being listed as six different incorporations.
“To my view, the only entity really directly benefiting by this operation is the entity that owns all the facilities,” he said. “It's not consistent with the welfare of the city of Peoria to issue additional privileges to an enterprise that appears to be profiting without paying their taxes to the city.”
Prior to Axis acquiring the gas stations, the State of Illinois indicted previous owners Jitender Singh, Surinder Singh and Roger Multani on multiple charges of fraud, theft and tax evasion. He said he’s hopeful the city can work with the new owners to get the outstanding balance paid.
“I felt strongly that in this circumstance, because of the history and the coordinated ownership of the actual facilities, that there's a responsible party there that can step forward and guarantee the city, if we can engage them in that conversation,” he said. “So we would look forward to talking with Axis and the operator and getting some clarity on putting the city in a more secure position.”
Hayes explained the outstanding payments weren’t the only reason behind denying liquor sales.
“Two of the sites were opposed by our city police department because of significant criminal activity on those sites. Five of the six sites were directly opposed by the councilman ... for those districts in which those sites are present, the councilman had different reasons for opposing that,” he said.
Hayes also noted that only 10 of the 38 licensed gas stations within the city have licenses to sell package liquor.
