Weekend alcohol sales in Conway have been technically illegal for decades. Not anymore.

As a matter of good government, cities and towns regularly update local laws to keep pace with modern changes — normally a mundane process that’s hardly worth attention.

But in Conway?

A recent alteration lifted a nearly 50-year-old ban that read like a Prohibition era no-no.

Existing language is “fairly awkwardly worded and not really contemporary for what we’re intending to accomplish,” assistant city manager John Rogers explained to the city council Oct. 3.

Since 1978, it’s been illegal for anyone to sell beer, wine or “other drink of similar alcoholic content” in city limits between midnight Saturday and sunrise Monday.

“That might cause a problem,” Mayor Barbara Bellamy quipped after the council was notified of the policy.

Officials scrubbed the text from its updated set of liquor laws.

As Conway continues its growth, city leaders are looking for ways to make it more visitor-friendly while heeding residents’ concerns.

Over the summer, there was talk of pulling back the last call from 2 a.m. to midnight but allowing public drinking downtown along parts of Third and Fourth avenues to Main Street and Fifth Avenue — covering about 15 businesses in all.

“A last call provision of midnight would extend the stated quiet time hours already in place within the noise ordinance, and serve to allow the mingling of residential and commercial with less noise-related issues an open business creates,” a description of the policy penned by the city says.

This story was originally published October 11, 2022 at 8:00 AM.