Small craft breweries and distilleries, wine production facilities and tasting rooms can draw tourists, promote small business and boost a local economy.

The question that the Auburn City Council will have to answer in the coming weeks is whether it should allow these things in Auburn.

Members of the Planning and Community Development Committee on Monday approved sending to the Finance Committee and from there to the full Council a proposed ordinance calling for a number of changes to the City code that would make such facilities possible in Auburn.

“We’re not necessarily going to have wineries in Auburn … but we may have a manufacturing and production element here,” senior planner Hillary Taylor told members of the committee.

The PCDC first raised the issue last October, then directed city staff to do the necessary spade work.

On May 17, 2011, the Planning Commission held a public hearing on the measure then expressed its preference for allowing manufacturing and production facilities in the downtown urban core only if they also had a tasting room. City staff, however, recommended that at this time language requiring a tasting room not be a part of the ordinance.

City staff added a definition for a wine production facility and changed the definition for a tasting room to be more general and to be dependent upon proof of a valid Washington State liquor license.

Planning staff also recommended that tasting rooms be an outright permitted use, that is, requiring no special permits. Manufacturing and production facilities, however, would require an administrative use permit

The proposed ordinance defines a tasting room as a location separate from or on the same site as the production site, allowing customers to taste samples of wine, beer, or other alcoholic beverages, with a required state issued liquor license to operate. In addition to sampling of beverages, a tasting room may include retail sales for off-premises consumption.

Local business leaders chimed in.

“Obviously, the Chamber supports business in general, and anything that could help the local economy is great,” said Nancy Wyatt, President and COO of the Auburn Area Chamber of Commerce. “The city of Pacific has Trade Route Brewery, which is a wonderful micro brewery. It’s an excellent place with wonderful people. And it’s neat to be able to see people take stuff from the raw product to fruition.

“This has a tourism element, and to add a tourism draw would be wonderful, Wyatt added.

The proposed ordinance offers the following definitions, as well:

• A microbrewery is a production facility that makes beer. It may sell beer of its own making at retail for on-and-off premises consumption and may act as a distributor for beer of its own production.

•A wine production facility may sell wine of its own production at retail for on- and-off premises consumption, and may act as a distributor for wine of its own production.