Dash left high and dry for wine, beer sales at game

Team needs agreements and ABC permit

By: Laura Graff | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: April 24, 2009

This home stand will be a dry one for the Winston-Salem Dash baseball team.

The team has been unable to get a permit to sell beer or wine at Gene Hooks Field at Wake Forest Baseball Park, where it will play its home games for at least the first half of this season.

The Dash will play at what was formerly known as Ernie Shore Field because negotiations between the team's owners have held up construction on the team's stadium downtown.

"We are basically in the situation with the beer situation where the ballpark is not our facility and we need to play by the rules, and we intend to do so," said Kevin Terry, the team's president and general manager. "We hope that in the future we will be able to offer beer sales as part of the experience of the ballpark."

Terry said that "a number of different factors" are preventing alcohol sales, though he declined to go into detail.

Ed Collari, a spokesman for the Dash, said that the team is working with Wake Forest University to meet its requirements and with Aramark, the company that handles concessions sales for Joel Coliseum. The coliseum is owned and operated by the city of Winston-Salem, even though Wake Forest's basketball team plays there. Wake Forest does not allow alcohol sales at any of its athletics events.

The Dash hasn't been able to reach an agreement with either Aramark or the university to sell alcohol at the ballpark, Collari said. The team also needs a state permit from the Alcohol Beverage Control Commission.

Even with a permit, said Steve Adams, an assistant athletics director at Wake Forest, the Dash must meet certain requirements from the university. Adams would not say what those requirements might be.

"There's some logistics we need to work through that both of us have to come to an agreement on," Adams said.

That wasn't the team's only problem yesterday. Collari said that the office phones were down from about 9 to 10:30 a.m. because of a circuit problem.

A dispute between the team's co-owners, Billy Prim and Andrew "Flip" Filipowski, has slowed construction on the new $38 million stadium.

The team has said it will play its home games at least through mid-June at the Wake Forest Baseball Park.

■ Laura Graff can be reached at 727-7279 or at lgraff@wsjournal.com.

■ Journal reporter Wesley Young contributed to this article.