DENVER – A grocery store-funded study has stirred controversy after it said beer and wine prices in Colorado would decrease if the state relaxed alcohol restrictions.

The study – from a University of Denver Daniels Business School professor – comes as grocery stores hope to collect signatures to place the issue before voters.

The proposal would ask voters next year to create a new license allowing supermarkets and convenience stores to sell full-strength beer and wine. The initiative would target retail outlets generating at least 25 percent of its revenue from food sales.

The Your Choice Colorado campaign released the study on Wednesday, which was funded by at least three supermarket chains, including Kroger, Safeway and Wal-Mart.

“The bottom line is that allowing beer and wine sales in grocery stores helps Colorado customers, creates thousands of jobs and expands the craft beer industry,” said Your Choice Colorado Campaign Manager Georgie Aguirre-Sacasa.

But critics – led by liquor store owners and craft brewers – quickly questioned the merits of the study, suggesting that “the grocery stores clearly got what they paid for.”

“It seems very self-serving,” said Kris Oyler, chief executive and co-founder of Durango-based Steamworks Brewing Co.

“It is laughable on its face,” added Curits Hubbard, spokesman for the opposition campaign, Keep Colorado Local. “It was either authored in the creative writing department or by someone who doesn’t understand Colorado’s liquor market.”

The study says that relaxing alcohol restrictions would lead to 18 percent declines in beer and wine prices in Colorado. The average Colorado household would save $750 on alcohol over the next three years if alcohol is allowed to be sold in retail stores.

“It’s basic economic theory,” said Dr. Jack Strauss, who authored the study. “Competition ... means you have lower prices. Liquor stores are a protected class; there’s not that much competition.”

He added that the grocery stores that contracted his services largely left him alone for several months to conduct the research.

In analyzing the data, Strauss compared Colorado to states with grocery stores selling full-strength beer and wine, including Oregon and Washington.

Craft brewers have been worried that the initiative would make it more difficult to place products by having to deal with grocery store managers. They argue that smaller liquor stores – which widely accept local products – would go out of business.

“You’re pushing out small, independent, local businesses, and that’s unfortunate,” Oyler said. “It’s disturbing that they would skew data like this to try to get what they want.”

But Strauss stood by his statistical analysis, pointing out that local liquor stores thrive near the few grocery stores in Colorado allowed to sell alcohol.

Only a handful of grocery stores in Colorado sell full-strength beer and wine, as state law allows for only one license per business.

Strauss said he relied on estimates for much of the study. For example, he stated that the initiative would lead to 11,000 to 12,000 more grocery store jobs, 200 to 225 more grocery stores in Colorado and increased sales of 25 percent.

It was also impossible to compare Colorado to states that made a similar transition away from the liquor store model, Strauss said.

Even though the study says craft beer sales would substantially increase as a result of the initiative, and that the impact on liquor stores would be limited, critics of the initiative don’t find the results comforting.

“We all make choices in life – there’s good and bad choices,” said Mike Rich, owner of Wagon Wheel Liquors in Durango, who fears for his liquor store and others in Durango. “Just because you decide to make this choice, and it’s going to be easier to buy beer and wine in the grocery store, doesn’t mean it’s a good choice if it costs jobs and businesses.”

pmarcus@durangoherald.com