Confusion has been the primary response to a new interpretation of a couple pieces of legislation related to tourism and hospitality. When Mesero owner Trey Dyer posted a reel in June detailing the OAK’s use of the common patio law from 2020 in combination with the Tourism Development Act of 2024, operators around the city were curious about their rights within the legislation.
First, the background.
In 2020, largely inspired by COVID-related issues at Edmond Railyard, the Legislature passed a law that allowed all licensed premises adjacent to a patio to use the patio, as opposed to the old law that only allowed one licensed concept to use the outdoor space. The primary stipulation was that all licensed entities would have to agree to share liability. It was a solid piece of legislation that allowed Railyard operators to sell alcohol in their operating space to customers who then were able to take the drink and food to the patio on the Railyard’s west side. Restaurants around the metro implemented policies that used the new rule.
When the Tourism Development Act (TDA) created a legally defined “entertainment district” in 2024, the law was initially meant to create economic incentives for large-scale developments like OAK, The National and Fordson Hotel OKC. Essentially, the legislation allowed for the expansion of the common patio rule to an entire district, using the verbiage in bipartisan Senate Bill 1057 (authored in 2023 by Sen. Paul Rosino, R-OKC), provided the district met the criteria set forth in the TDA, which included stipulations like a minimum of 100,000 square feet, a hotel or residential component in the district and a requirement that 25 percent of guests be from out of state.
What that means in practice is best illustrated at OAK. A guest can purchase a cocktail in a special cup (green, plastic, with the OAK logo) at Cloud Puncher in the Lively Hotel and then walk outside the hotel with that cocktail. This is very different from the to-go cocktail law also passed in 2020. A common patio law would have allowed the guest to take the drink to the OAK’s central plaza, but the TDA allows them to take the drink all over the district, including non-licensed retail establishments, provided the retail operator permits alcohol in the building. The other caveat is that the guest may not take the cocktail into another licensed establishment, so you can’t purchase a margarita at Mesero and carry it into Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar.
“I see this as a step in the right direction. That being said, I have two major concerns related to security,” Dyer said. “If someone buys a margarita from me and they’re not allowed to take it into another licensed establishment, do I have to police that? If it’s a beer, how would we even know where the beer came from? If something happens, everyone gets sued no matter who sold them the beer. Secondly, how do we police the rule in the larger district, as in how do we keep someone from leaving the premises with alcohol? OAK shouldn’t have to hire a half dozen extra off-duty police for every event. We have to figure out how everything works in the larger scheme of the district, but this is a good move for consumers and businesses.”
A few rules related to the application of the TDA and common patio were not explicitly clear. Two were mentioned by Dyer: which establishments are required to share liability and how a district could prevent a guest simply getting in their car with the drink and driving off.
Lack of rules
ABLE Commission Legal Counsel Kate Springer said that ABLE still needs to create some rules around the legislation.
“I would assume that only licensed establishments would be required to share liability,” Springer said. “[The security issue has] always been the responsibility of the licensed establishment to ensure guests follow the laws in their bar.”
The latter is certainly true, but the new legislation allows patrons to carry an open container — not closed as with to-go cocktails — to areas within the district where the operator has no control and no employees. At that point, it becomes the job of on-site security to prevent guests leaving with open alcohol. This is the singular issue that has made other operators balk at applying the new legislation to areas that would otherwise be obvious entertainment districts: Chisholm Creek, West Village, Bricktown, etc.
“As with most of our liquor laws, this one is confusing,” said Brian Bogert, founder of The Social Order Dining Collective, which has concepts in Bricktown, Chisholm Creek and West Village. “They have great intentions, but the application isn’t always great for the business or the customer, e.g., cocktails to go. I think it would make sense at a place like Scissortail Park, where our Spark customers want to take their food and alcohol to the lawn. We’d have Spark, the Omni and Scissortail Park as the entities to fulfill the entertainment district requirements. It gets trickier once you start factoring in more and different owners and concepts.”
In other words, exactly which other bars would an owner be willing to share legal liability with? It doesn’t take a great deal of thinking about it to realize some bars are not the kind of place you want to partner with if legal liability is on the table.
Bogert also brings up another issue. If the entire development is owned by one entity, it’s a simple matter of making the liability clause part of a lease. But if there are separate parcels with different owners (as is the case with all the downtown districts), application of the liability requirement becomes far less likely. That was confirmed in talks with multiple hospitality group owners, all of whom said explicitly that they wouldn’t enter into a liability agreement with bars over which they had no oversight.
For now, the new rules are being used at OAK and the OKC Outlets on Interstate 40 and Reno Avenue. And other large complexes are considering using the rule, but the liability issue seems likely to prevent the legislation from being used more broadly across the metro.
This article appears in Best of OKC 2025.