NEW ORLEANS — For decades, bars along Bourbon Street have had an open-door policy, enticing anyone over 21 to walk in at all hours with drink specials, blaring music, and neon lights. Come in, order a drink, and carry it back out to the street, if you like.
City and state officials want to put an end to this easy access, and they are proposing the bars close their doors at 3 a.m. — but remain open for business — in an effort to curb violence that has stained the city’s image.
‘‘I don’t see what the point is in it,’’ said Earl Bernhardt, owner of Tropical Isle and other clubs on and near Bourbon. He worries the policy might affect his bottom line. ‘‘We do a lot of business after 3 o’clock.’’
Officials hope a simple closed door will diminish the intensity of on-the-street, alcohol-fueled hoopla that has, at times, ended abruptly in gunfire. They say it’s not a curfew for a city known for all-night partying.
‘‘Right now, the doors are open, so it’s an open pedestrian party at 3 o’clock in the morning,’’ Mayor Mitch Landrieu told reporters this week. ‘‘We’re going to try to encourage them, through changing their environment, that it’s going to be a little bit more comfortable for them to go inside the bars, which they’ll be able to do until whatever hours they want to.’’
The closed-door initiative, which needs City Council approval, is one part of an anticrime program Landrieu, city officials, and Governor John Bel Edwards unveiled this week. The city is dealing with a depleted police force and a murder count that spiked last year to 175. It had reached a 43-year low of 150 in 2014.