Albany

Aiming to curb the drunken rowdiness and underage drinking that has tarnished the St. Patrick's Day parade for years, Mayor Kathy Sheehan said Wednesday that open containers of alcoholic beverages will be prohibited along Saturday's parade route.

Improving the image of the annual celebration of Irish-American pride has been on Sheehan's to-do list since she spotted parade-goers urinating near her car last year, her first parade as mayor.

"It's about basic human decency," Sheehan said at a morning news conference at City Hall. "No one should feel like they have the right to treat the city like that."

The parade committee is "1,000 percent supportive" of the ban, member Paul Collins said.

The parade, scheduled for 2 to 4 p.m., will step off at Central Avenue at Quail Street and head east to Washington Avenue, State Street and Lodge Street. Under a new program this year, designated areas along the route will be reserved as viewing spots for bar patrons. A zone at the corner of Lark Street and Washington Avenue will be set aside for spectators who receive wristbands from Lark Street bars and restaurants. Another zone, farther down Washington Avenue, along Academy Park, will be for customers who pick up wristbands at downtown bars before the parade.

"We're trying to help the business owners who have been asking us to take care of the open-container problem at the parade," said Deputy Chief Brendan Cox, who will become the city police department's acting chief on April 1, when Chief Steve Krokoff retires.

The city's three Business Improvement Districts' staff members will be responsible for monitoring their respective areas and ensuring exclusivity. Central Avenue bars that are along the parade route will be allowed to set up zones in front of their businesses and must control access. No food or drink will be sold in the viewing areas and — as throughout the city — consumption of alcoholic beverages in public will not be allowed.

Unlike in recent years when police officers told offenders to pour out their alcohol, or in the past when bars sold cups and cans of beer from sidewalk tables, the mayor said police this year will ticket offenders.

The idea behind the viewing zones, BID representatives and Cox said, is that instead of staking out a spot to watch the parade several hours before it passes by, and drinking all the while, viewers can have lunch and beverages at a restaurant or bar before the parade, collect a wristband and still be assured of having a vantage point from which to see the spectacle.

"This is (the city's) way of trying to help the businesses by giving our patrons their own viewing area," said Dan Atkins, manager of Oh Bar on Lark Street and vice president of the Lark Street BID. "Now people can stay and drink until 2 p.m., then walk down to see the parade. I think the bars could benefit from it, because it'll keep people there longer."

To avoid swamping 911, police advise calling 518-300-0570 during the parade to report open containers or non-emergency incidents, Cox said.

"We know this is a work in progress," Cox said. "We've asked the ones that take part to give us feedback on how to improve it."

Bar owners met on Tuesday with police brass, officials of the Lark Street, Downtown and Central Avenue business improvement districts and city officials. Reaction was mixed, with some saying they were presented with a hastily organized and ill-conceived plan.

"They were brainstorming right there in front of us. Nobody seemed to have any real idea how it was supposed to work," said Mike Ripley, co-owner of the bar Blue 82 on North Pear Street. "Eventually they came up with a cockamamie scheme that seems impossible to implement and kind of pointless."

"I think it's a good thing," said John Mancini, who has owned Pauly's Hotel on Central Avenue, along the parade route, for the past 16 years. Mancini said he will be working with the bar next door, The Low Beat, on a joint viewing space for their customers. He said he was uncertain where the wristbands would come from or whether he would have to add staff to supervise the viewing area.

The city's attitude about the parade has evolved. In 1999, then-Mayor Jerry Jennings changed the decades-old route of the parade to send marchers past the grand opening of Jillian's, a sports bar on North Pearl Street that has since closed. North Pearl was crowded with bars for much of the next decade, and the street scene before and after the annual parade was marred by intoxication, misbehavior and trash.

Jennings ordered the route changed for the 2012 parade, to an ending on lower State Street that avoids North Pearl. The mayor's office said changing the route was unrelated to the infamous "kegs and eggs" melee uptown on the morning of the 2011 parade that resulted in property and vehicle damage and the arrests of college students.

sbarnes@timesunion.com • 518-454-5489 • @Tablehopping