Mayor Riley's administration is sending to City Council a proposed ordinance that would create an Entertainment District running the length of the peninsula where most alcohol sales from midnight to 6 a.m. would be banned. The Entertainment District, with King Street as its spine, would extend from Broad Street on up to the city's border with North Charleston.

"This is big," said Council Member Mike Seekings (8th District), who revealed the proposal last night at a meeting of the Radcliffeborough Association. Seekings said the proposal was driven in part by an ultimatum by three large high-tech companies that want to relocate to Upper King Street but are concerned about the boisterous, sometimes rowdy nighttime scene in the district created by inebriated revelers who crowd the numerous bars, pubs and restaurants.

"These companies are worth tens of millions of dollars," Seekings said. "if the ordinance passes, they'll come, If it doesn't, they won't."

The proposed ordinance would exempt hotels with 20 or more rooms from the ban on serving alcohol past midnight to 6 a.m.

Seekings, who supports the proposal, told Local America that the chance the proposal would be approved by the 12-member Council "will be close." He told the Radcliffeborough Association meeting: "We have to make Charleston a place for people who are going to be here 72 years as well as 72 hours" –- a jab at tourists and other visitors, whose nighttime behavior in the Upper King district –- especially after midnight –- is fueling increasingly antagonistic feelings among residents who live on the residential streets that are as close as one block away.

One association member said about the scene: "There's this restaurant that has a garden in back. They were putting on music that, if I were 30 years old and didn't leave nearby, I'd love to hear. But I live a block away, and I could hear the pounding through my walls."

At a recent meeting of the Mazyck-Wraggborough Association, a homeowner called Upper King "the new Bourbon Street" –- a reference to the tourist-magnet neighborhood in the historic French Quarter of New Orleans that, some critics say, is losing its charm to frenetic commercialism.

in an effort to better control what's happening in the Upper King district, including on the traffic-congested thoroughfare, the Charleston Police Department is deploying eight newly hired police officers to the area.

For decades, Upper King was a mostly retail district, lined with clothing, furniture, hardware and notions shops and newsdealers and barbershops. As those businesses began to close in the face of the development of malls elsewhere in the region, the vacated buildings –- many dating back to the 19th century –- deteriorated.

Mayor Riley's administration acted to reinvent the district with a new mix of businesses –- venues catering to tourists and other visitors but including a sprinkling of high-tech companies who would set the tone for the "knowledge" economy that the city government and business community seek to create.

Swelling numbers of tourists and reasonable rents attracted a new generation of hospitality-oriented business people who are turning restored buildings into often-packed fashionably edgy restaurants and bars, some featuring live music.

But reinvented Upper King is also home to the headquarters of PeopleMatter, the human resources software company that relocated its headquarters from North Charleston to No. 466 King in 2011 and plans to exp;and its job force there to 265. PeopleMatter's office building is surrounded by restaurants and bars that start coming alive by 6 p.m.