Another liquor store on Tudor Road near Lake Otis Parkway? Sure. We have New Party Time and Brown Jug just about a mile down, but why not one more? Let the commerce bloom.

Let's see, where exactly should we put it? How about a block from Party Time, right across from the Anchorage Gospel Rescue Mission, one of the city's largest shelters, where many homeless alcoholics go everyday? Yes. Let's do that. Great idea.

What's that you say? Isn't putting a liquor store across from a homeless shelter kind of like putting a buffet restaurant outside of a weight-loss clinic or a bar outside of an AA meeting? Just plain illogical? Especially since chronic inebriates cost so much public money?

Well, it's too late for that argument. And anyway, there used to be a Tesoro quick-stop across from the shelter. It sold booze until it closed over the summer, and the building had a conditional-use permit to sell alcohol. The Assembly and the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board saw no problem with putting another liquor store in its place. Why disrupt the status quo? Alaska Liquor, the new store, opened about a month ago.

But how did they miss that the neighborhood is already sick from alcohol? Didn't anybody know that police keep getting called there because intoxicated people keep getting hit by cars? And what about Campbell Creek Park, just a few blocks from Tudor, where problems with homeless alcoholics seem to be getting worse?

Just this summer police found one homeless man, Danny Wright, dead with "acute alcohol intoxication," floating in Campbell Creek. That same week, another man, Simeon Boots, died from the same thing in the woods just off Laurel Street, surrounded by the empty bottles of low-cost, locally available beverages: Mike's Harder Lemonade, Boone's Farm Orange Hurricane and Natural Ice beer.

Didn't the neighbors complain? Yes, they did. Three hundred of them signed a petition against the store. But it was too late. There was miscommunication and missed deadlines.

Campbell Park Community Council President Peter Hamlett says he wasn't notified in time to fight the store. The liquor license came up for approval in the summer, when the council was on recess, he said. It was advertised in the paper and on the door of the store, but no one caught it.

ABC board notes show it sent notification to the Tudor, not the Campbell Park, community council. The board notifies the community council listed on the license application, but in this case, that part of the application was blank, according to Shirley Gifford, ABC director. Staff chose the community council that seemed most appropriate. But it was not the community council that represents the area where the liquor store is located.

The city, which also notifies community councils, says it sent notification according to procedure, but the clerk who would have sent it changed jobs and her sent mail was deleted, so there is no record. A recent search of the inbox that receives those e-mails at the Federation of Community Councils did not turn up a notification from the city.

The neighbors didn't realize what was happening until it had already been approved by the Assembly. The Assembly supported the store, approving it without discussion, because there was no community opposition, said Assemblywoman Elvi Gray-Jackson, who represents the area and now regrets her vote.

"It kind of slipped through the cracks," she said.

Neighbors brought their petition and complaints to the ABC board in September, in a last-ditch effort to stop it. But the board voted to let the process move forward. The owner followed all the rules and it had already been approved. And so, after a short reprieve, there was once again one more opportunity to pick-up a 40-ouncer and a couple plastic shots of vodka on Tudor.

David Williams, program director at the Rescue Mission, was resigned when I called him. His people would keep working on their recoveries, liquor store or no. But, "it's the last thing this neighborhood needs," he said. The symbolism bothers him. Homeless people camp in the park, with the liquor store between them and the shelter and its recovery program.

"It's almost like they're trying to get them before we get them," he said.

I stopped in at Party Time last week, where I found a manager in the back, eating tacos in a room plastered with pin-ups. He dialed the owner, Roy Cappadona, and handed me the phone.

Cappadona has owned the store for five years. It's been there for 20. He said they don't sell to chronic inebriates and have a long list of people who have been banned. They won't take panhandling change in exchange for alcohol. They don't serve people who look or smell like they've been drinking.

"We try not to make the problem worse than it is," he said.

Brown Jug has a similar policy, and is well-known for being involved in the community with the homeless issue. They also help run an organization that cleans up homeless camps in city parks.

Next I went to Alaska Liquor, where I chatted for a while with the manager. She used to work at the Tesoro, she told me. She doesn't serve intoxicated people. She doesn't sell to people who come in more than three times in a day. She checks IDs and won't let panhandlers near the store. But there's no law that says you can't sell to someone who is homeless, she said.

"That's taking away someone's constitutional rights," she said.

Around then, the owner walked in. He had on a hoodie and a Yankee's ball cap. His name is Val Dobrova. He's 27. He got his business experience working at Sicily's Pizza, which his family owns. He didn't understand why the community was upset. His spot had always been a liquor store. He hadn't heard about the homeless deaths in the park. He hadn't talked to Williams at the shelter or the community council, he said. He asked if I had their phone numbers.

"We don't see a lot of homeless," he told me, even though we both could see the shelter through the front window. His clientele are lawyers, doctors, professional people, he said. He's just a business person providing a product that people want to buy, he explained. He hopes to open a sandwich shop next door.

I was a little doubtful of the doctors and lawyers thing. But it was true the problem wasn't really his, though he could do everyone a favor by watching who he serves. The problem was why anyone allowed a liquor store outside of a homeless shelter in the first place.

A little later, waiting at the light at Lake Otis and Tudor , I watched a woman in a dirty parka shuffle down the sidewalk. Her cheeks were flaming, her eyes glassy. All the liquor stores said they weren't selling to people like her, but there she was, drunk, on the roadside.

The neighborhood's issue with alcohol and homelessness is chronic and common in this city. There will probably be more deaths because of it. Stopping one liquor store might have made a small change and sent a message that the community is paying attention. But it fell through the cracks.

It's easy to predict what happens now. We went with the status quo. Now we get more of the same.