Cordova's visitor numbers support 0.03 of a tourism liquor license. Rounded up, that is one.

Copper River Brewing wants to let families with children eat in its dining room and to put live music on through September. To do it, the Cordova brewery is asking for a seasonal tourism license no business in town has ever held — and the license only exists because of a rounding rule.

The state allows one of these licenses per 1,500 visitors per visitor day, and it defines a visitor day as a town's annual visitor count divided by 182. Run Cordova's numbers through that and the answer is 0.03 licenses. It rounds up. One becomes available.

The visitor count came from the brewery. It put Cordova at 9,112 visitors in 2025, most of them — 7,010 — worked backward from the roughly $277,000 the city collected in accommodations surtax, with cannery workers, non-resident fishermen and crew, and cruise day passengers making up the rest. The brewery calls its own estimate conservative. Licensing examiner Anna White ran the figure through the formula and it held. A separate threshold requires 4,000 visitors a year, which Cordova clears at more than twice over.

That number is now everyone's. Once the state accepts a visitor count, regulation fixes it for every application of this type in Cordova for the rest of the calendar year. About 2,416 people live there year-round, and the town's two existing restaurant licenses are capped by that population rather than by tourists.

Under the license, 16- to 20-year-olds could eat in the dining room on their own. Anyone younger would need a companion at least 21 and a parent's consent. Minors would stay out of the bar area, which a manager would have to staff, though they could work in the kitchen. Food sales would have to at least match alcohol sales over the year.

Christiana and Curtis Fincher own half the company each. The Alcoholic Beverage Control Board takes up the application Sept. 1 in Anchorage. Nobody objected. The season runs April 1 through Sept. 30.