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ASHEBORO — The decades-long battle over whether Asheboro should allow alcohol to be sold included dramatic claims from both sides.

On the one, drinking and driving would soar. Drunks would stagger down the street.

On the other, the economy would boom. Haute cuisine would be served next to barbecue pits.

The reality, a year after voters overturned the long-standing ban? For the most part, it’s the same place — only now you can get a six-pack at the grocery store.

But there is a spark of nightlife in a downtown that hasn’t had any for as long as most people can remember.

Sunset Avenue isn’t going to turn into Broadway anytime soon, but for the first time in many years, the night is alive with voices and light.

“The entire downtown’s vibe has changed,” says David Guinn, who works at the Downtown Soda Shop. “The streets are just alive now.”

That’s a stark change from the Sunset most residents grew up with in what was the state’s largest dry city.

“A year ago, you would walk out in the street, there’d be no cars out,” says Guinn, ballcap perched on his head.

Downtown stayed quiet, apart from the steady stream of cruisers heading up and down Fayetteville Street in an endless motorized dance, and even that had faded in recent years.

The kind of nighttime stroll that gives Elm Street in Greensboro its pulsing life was absent.

Instead, the drive up U.S. 220 had long been interwoven into the rhythm of residents’ lives. Up to Randleman for a quick beer run. Up to Greensboro for bars and nightlife.

A few doors down from the Soda Shop, at Lumina, a wine bar, Donna Crisco reflects about the change over a glass of white.

“We’ve quit going to Greensboro,” she says.

The bar was a leap of faith for Emily Hieronymus, who opened it with her boyfriend and his sister.

“It was so quiet here when we first started,” she says. “A ghost town.”

But the changes on the street reflect the changes inside.

Once an accountant’s office, the storefront has been transformed, with bottles on racks along the wall and in the middle of the room. A small bar runs along the side, with a patio outside.

After a lifetime living in Asheboro, after seeing failed referendum after failed referendum, Crisco was amazed to see the place open up.

“I remember when I first heard about it: a wine bar in Asheboro. I’m like, you’ve got to be flipping kidding,” Crisco says.

The fight that led to passage of the referendum last year was the culmination of decades of struggle over the city’s dry status.

The issue reappeared like clockwork, with similar claims made each time.

Proponents said legalization would pave the way for economic development and new dining options — in 1994, the Randolph Chamber of Commerce attempted to sway voters with the prospect of a new Applebee’s should the referendum pass.

It failed.

Meanwhile, opponents brought out the big guns as well. Crime and drunkenness would rise. Morality would decay. Why, they asked, should the city sell its soul for the sake of a few chain restaurants?

The debate raged despite the evidence from dry-to-wet transitions in similar towns where not much changed. Cities didn’t boom. Chain restaurants didn’t flock. Furniture cities didn’t become sin cities.

So far, despite an event last week billed as “Asheboro’s First Wet T-Shirt Contest,” the city’s not much different. Those on both sides of the issue have not seen their hopes or fears materialize.

In the end, getting beer is just a little more convenient.

“There’s not a significant change for the good or the bad,” says police Capt. Junior Vuncannon. “We dealt with fights before. We dealt with drunks before. We’re dealing with them now.”

There are, on balance, a few more cases of drunken driving each month, Vuncannon says, but that’s not enough from which to conclude anything.

Mayor David Jarrell, an opponent, worried about the effect of the referendum on alcohol consumption.

“My concern was the availability, opening up with the nightclubs, all the stuff that it brings in,” he says.

But problems seem to be few.

“We’ve had a few complaints,” Jarrell says, “very few.”

Former Mayor Joe Trogdon, a referendum backer, says that Asheboro with alcohol is much the same as Asheboro without it.

The change hasn’t supercharged the local economy, he says, although the country’s economic struggles all but precluded that from happening.

And so, the new Asheboro really boils down to the new Sunset Avenue.

And on a recent Friday, not far from the lights of the football game at the high school, the new Asheboro comes to life.

The rest of downtown is dark, but light streams from the windows of the newly alive storefronts.

Back at the Downtown Soda Shop, Guinn tends to customers and starts getting ready to close for the night.

Behind him on the wall of the shop is a sign Asheboro restaurants and stores haven’t displayed in a long time, if ever: “We I.D.”

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jason.hardin@news-record.com