ESCONDIDO, CA – No new adult businesses have applied to set up shop in Escondido, CA of late, but that fact isn’t stopping members of the city’s planning commission from calling for more stringent regulations on such businesses.According to the North County Times, Escondido city planner Jay Petrek said that officials in Escondido are moving to take advantage of what they see as favorable court decisions, citing specifically a 2005 ruling that upheld the city of La Habra’s regulation mandating that minimum space be kept between dancers and strip club patrons.
Attorney Deborah Fox, a First Amendment law specialist who has represented the city in legal battles with an adult bookstore chain, warned that Escondido’s ordinance was already as strict as it could be. Any more extensive regulations, Fox cautioned, could result in lawsuits challenging the ordinance.
According to the Times, the ordinance designates seven shopping centers around the city as the only places where new adult businesses would be allowed, imposes a distance that must be maintained between dancers and customers, and prohibits direct tipping of dancers by customers.
Petrek said that existing businesses, including the F Street video store on Grand Avenue and Adult Video Specialties on South Escondido Boulevard would not be affected by the new ordinance.
In advance of passing the ordinance, the city sent out more than 1,500 notices to residents who live near the designated shopping centers; the shopping centers in question have been designated as areas in which adult businesses are permitted for over a decade.
Although several residents wrote back or called in responding to the notices, only attended the Planning Commission meeting earlier this week – David Martin, a resident of a neighborhood near the East Valley Parkway, told the commission that he didn’t want adult businesses in his neighborhood, which he said was already in danger of becoming “seedy” due to the presence of tattoo parlors and liquor stores.
Commissioner Guy Winton told Martin that he sympathized, saying “I don’t want it in any of our neighborhoods… but we have to operate in the theater of the possible.”
Another Commissioner, Barry Newman, proposed dropping one of the seven shopping centers from the list, as the owners of the property have already notified the city that the shopping center’s rules for tenants prohibits adult businesses.
The Times reports that a majority of Newman’s peers on the Commission disagreed.
“We need to have something defensible, not a leaky boat,” said Commissioner Jeffrey Weber.
The City Council is scheduled to discuss the adult business ordinance at when it meets on Valentine’s Day.
