Report: Carbondale bars should stay closed on Halloween

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- A city report says a strip of popular bars near downtown Carbondale should remain closed during Halloween as a safety precaution.

The 27-page report, which comes as some community members suggest lifting the Halloween restrictions, details a 30-year history of street parties at an area popular with students from nearby Southern Illinois University.

The city has restricted the bars from opening on Halloween -- and the weekend before, if Halloween falls during the week -- for all but one year since 1995.

In 2000, the only year the bars were allowed to open, dozens of people were arrested after a melee between partiers and police. Halloween parties in the 1980s and 1990s brought similar problems.

"The risk remains high in opening South Illinois Avenue during Halloween," according to the report, which was written by city staff at the request of the mayor. "Carbondale and SIUC cannot afford new negative publicity for a problem Halloween. The community has invested six years into having success at Halloween; one bad year would make that success moot."

Mayor Brad Cole said the lack of violence during the bar shutdown shows the policy's effectiveness.

"This year was very uneventful, and in some way that's a good thing," Cole said. "What we did was designed to curb off the violence and damage to property, and we have been successful."