Controls on Sex Businesses Blasted

Angry owners of sexually oriented businesses turned out in force for a hearing in Reseda on Wednesday night to denounce a proposed ordinance requiring the establishments to move away from residential areas.

Their arguments were countered by a handful of San Fernando Valley residents who complained that such businesses have attracted prostitution, loitering, drug trafficking and lewd conduct to their neighborhoods.

At issue is an ordinance proposed by Councilman Hal Bernson to force existing adult businesses throughout Los Angeles to move at least 500 feet away from homes.

The ordinance would apply to sexually oriented bookstores, massage parlors, X-rated movie theaters, topless bars and sexual encounter establishments.

Of the 125 adult businesses in Los Angeles, 108 would be forced to move to commercial areas, said city planner Darryl Fisher.

“You’re pushing us out of business,” complained Joan Urrutia, owner of two topless bars, the Candy Cat in Chatsworth and Candy Cat Too in Canoga Park.

Urrutia, as did most of the 25 representatives of adult businesses in attendance, said her customers are nearby residents who would not follow her to a location in a commercial area.

She also said that commercial-area rents would be too high for her to stay in business.

“There are more crimes in parks than in adult bookstores,” said Buddy Green, who owns a sexually oriented arcade in the East Valley.

But Dan Shapiro, president of the Studio City Residents Assn., told the store owners to “take your businesses someplace else . . . We have the right not to have these businesses in our neighborhood.”

Patric Quinn of Canoga Park complained that an adult bookstore near his home attracts homosexuals “cruising every night until 4 or 5 in the morning.”

The hearing at the Reseda Woman’s Club was the second of three being conducted in the city. A final hearing is scheduled for tonight in San Pedro.

Fisher said the unusual regional hearings are designed to compile a record of complaints to support the city’s position that adult businesses are incompatible with residential areas.

Such a record would be useful in the event of a court challenge of the ordinance.

The city has been gradually tightening restrictions on adult businesses.

The council in 1982 approved a measure by Bernson to apply the 500-foot buffer to new businesses. Because of legal questions raised at the time by the city attorney, however, Bernson held off on seeking to apply the restrictions to businesses already in operation.

The city attorney advised him that forcing businesses to move may be an unconstitutional denial of due process.

Bernson said he believes his new proposal will resolve that issue by allowing existing adult businesses two years to move to sites that conform to the 500-foot limitation.

As an alternative, Bernson’s proposal would allow an adult business to seek approval from a city zoning administrator, after a public hearing, to stay at its location if it could prove that the move would cause economic hardship.

The city attorney’s office said the two-year period was needed to give businesses time to recover their investments.

The proposed Los Angeles law is patterned after a Detroit ordinance upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court several years ago after being challenged as a violation of First Amendment guarantees.

Testimony from the three hearings will be included in a report to the Planning Commission, which is expected to send the report to the full council by summer.

Bernson predicted the ordinance would “sail through the council, probably without dissent.”