August 5, 2004

Council pursues ordinance restricting sexual businesses

Village Council on Monday passed the first of two votes needed to place on the books regulations restricting where adult-entertainment businesses can operate in Yellow Springs.

At its meeting Aug. 2, Council approved by a 4–0 vote the first reading of an ordinance addressing Council’s concern for regulating sexually oriented businesses. Council member Denise Swinger was absent.

Council will hold a second reading and public hearing on the ordinance at its meeting Tuesday, Sept. 7.

The Village Planning Commission spent several months reviewing the language that eventually went into the zoning proposal. Last month, plan board recommended that Council pass the ordinance.

The Village solicitor, John Chambers, told Council on Monday that the language contained in the ordinance “has made its way around the country,” indicating that the ordinance is court-tested.

The proposed ordinance would amend two sections of the Village Zoning Code — 1258, which governs the General Business District, and 1260, Light Industrial District — and would create a new zoning chapter for sexually oriented businesses.

The legislation would prohibit adult-entertainment businesses from locating within 500 feet of schools, day care centers, libraries, public parks, government buildings and places of worship. The scope of the restrictions would serve to prohibit such businesses from operating in the downtown area.

Adult-entertainment businesses would be permitted in the General Business District, which is located on the south end of town along Xenia Avenue, and in portions of the Light Industrial Districts, which include areas that contain facilities for The Antioch Company, Vernay Laboratories’ Dayton Street plants, SoundSpace and YSI Incorporated. According to a map of Yellow Springs prepared by Village Planner Phil Hawkey, sexually oriented businesses would be permitted in just over 33 acres, or a little more than 2.5 percent, of Yellow Springs.

Council members have expressed interest in this legislation as a proactive means to regulate adult-entertainment establishments before any actually open for business here.

Council member George Pitstick noted that under the Village’s current zoning regulations, adult-entertainment businesses can operate “wherever they darn well please.” He called the proposed ordinance before Council a “giant step in the right direction” that would protect people and families.

Chambers told Council members that if they want to regulate adult businesses “you have to do it before they come and not after.”

Council members and Chambers said that the Village cannot prohibit adult-entertainment businesses from operating in town, but the government could dictate and limit where they are located. Council is “taking the most important step” to determine where sexually oriented businesses can operate in the village, Chambers said.

“The best we can do is to contain them,” Council president Tony Arnett said of adult-entertainment business. “If we want to stop them” from operating in Yellow Springs, “we have to count on the community” to tell such businesses that they are not welcome here, he said.

Chambers said that such businesses fall into the area of “free expression,” which, he noted, is “zealously protected” by the Ohio and U.S. Constitutions. A law banning these businesses from town would be struck down in court, he said.

The solicitor did tell Council that the Village could take a “more aggressive step” to regulate adult-entertainment businesses. That law deals with the hours these businesses can operate and requires employees to register with the Village, he said. Chambers described this option as a “fairly burdensome, complex piece of legislation.”

Pitstick responded by saying that Council “might want to look at” this legislation after it approves the initial ordinance voted on Monday.

The proposed ordinance before Council does more than determine where sexually oriented business can operate in town. The new zoning chapter the ordinance would create, for instance, defines such establishments as an adult arcade, bookstore, novelty and video store, cabaret, motel and movie theater; escort agency; massage parlor; “semi-nude model studio”; and “sexual encounter establishment.” The proposal defines adult bookstores, novelty stores and video stores as businesses where more than 50 percent of the stock or revenue consists of sexually oriented products.

The legislation would require a sexually oriented business to incorporate screening or covering on doors and windows to “prevent any view into the interior” of the operation. It would also prohibit businesses from erecting advertising that could be seen from public areas, including sidewalks. An adult business that abutted land zoned residential, agriculture or conservation would be required to build a fence six feet high, separating the business from such neighbors.

—Robert Mihalek