This fall, Longmont will have a tasting room next-door to a school. And that has the parents and staff of St. Vrain Community Montessori School concerned.

“We are faced with a situation that involves adults, alcohol, cars and children together,” said parent Susan Cousins at Tuesday’s Longmont City Council meeting, choking up for a minute. “That’s a frustrating mix for a parent.”

The council voted 7-0 to ask Grossen Bart Brewery, 1025 Delaware Ave., to delay its tasting room’s opening time from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays during the school year. But ask is all it can do.

That’s because the issue puts the city between two “cant’s.” It can’t tell a school where to locate, even if the school chooses an industrial zone as St. Vrain did. But it also can’t regulate the operations of a tasting room — that’s part of an alcohol manufacturing license, which is overseen only by state liquor authorities.

The same restriction also means tasting rooms don’t have to keep a 500-foot distance from schools, as a bar would. That seemed a strange loophole to Councilman Brian Bagley.

“If I have a duck, and I want to call it a dog …or a sheep, it’s still a duck,” he said.

Part of the problem, city attorney Eugene Mei said, is that tasting rooms have changed faster than state law has. Originally, they used to be a place where someone would sample a drink or two after a brewery tour. Now, they’re gathering places in their own right.

“It is state statute,” Mei said. “It’s nothing we can do anything about on a local level.”

“Unfortunately, this is a situation where we have a number of ordinances and state laws that are competing against each other,” agreed City Manager Harold Dominguez.

Nobody from Grossen Bart spoke at the meeting.

Grossen Bart sits between the Montessori school’s two buildings at 1055 and 1001 Delaware Ave. The school has been in the “mixed industrial” location since 2009, coming there because the land was less expensive.

City planners approved Grossen Bart’s permit in February, waiving a formal site plan review. Manufacturing is one of the uses explicitly allowed in a mixed industrial zone.

Parents and staff said the lack of a review left them in the dark, since they didn’t hear that Grossen Bart was coming until they read about it in the Times-Call.

“I’m pro-business. I’m pro-craft breweries,” said resident Scott Holwick. “But I’m also pro-child and pro-child safety. And I’m stunned the city could allow this application to go forward.”

“I mean, it sounds like a goofy Saturday Night Live skit,” said Robert Wood, who has two sons at the school. He and several others asked the city to set a later starting time for the tasting room.

Mayor Dennis Coombs asked if some negotiation could take place, such as the school starting a little earlier and the brewery opening a little later. But that ran into another “can’t” — city staff noted that school hours have limited flexibility, since they have to stay within state statutes.

The council also discussed talking with state legislators about changes to state law, as well as making sure the city automatically asks for a hearing with the school board when a new school is being sited. According to Dominguez, city staff did not ask for that when St. Vrain’s location was chosen.

More discussion with the school district early on, Councilman Gabe Santos agreed, could head off conflicts like this later.

“I understand charter schools have limited funds, and that they’re trying to find the best place for the school, and the cheapest is mixed industrial,” Santos said. “But (a brewery) is still a use by right, regardless of whether there’s a school there or not.”

In 2013, Longmont changed its rules on microbreweries and similar businesses, allowing them to use more of their space for tasting rooms, as a way to encourage small start-ups. Coombs, who supported that measure, said not making the change would have left Grossen Bart with a smaller tasting room but wouldn’t have erased it.

“It wouldn’t fix this problem,” he said.

Times-Call staff writer Scott Rochat at 303-684-5220 or srochat@times-call.com