SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Most adult business zoning laws restrict retail locations from opening near churches, perhaps concerned that the easy proximity of erotica might overpower even the most religiously devoted. In a city run essentially by the church, zoning regulations can be even tougher to work around.Such has certainly proven to be the case for downtown Salt Lake City’s The Crazy Goat Saloon — formerly known as the Dead Goat.
The Crazy Goat legally became dead in December, when city records reveal that if was officially closed after a protracted legal battle with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Not only is the Goat dead, no other strip club can ever legally reside within the building now, due to zoning law changes that bar any similar establishments from operating near Temple Square, where the Mormon church’s headquarters are located.
KLS Newsradio’s website reports that the church initially attempted to keep the Crazy Goat Saloon from opening in 2003, arguing that its partially nude dancers would be a nuisance and make gentrification of the area difficult. A 3rd District Court judge was unconvinced, allowing the club to open. The church appealed, taking its case to the state Supreme Court. But now that case will never be heard.
Although the KLS website does not explain why the Crazy Goat Saloon decided to relinquished its sexually oriented business license and close, it does point out that the club was the last of its kind in the area and the last remaining establishment inside the Arrow Press Square building, which it deems “prime downtown real estate” located near the Salt Palace convention center and near the soon-to-be demolished Crossroads Plaza mall.
The building that formerly housed the Crazy Goat Saloon is now for sale and what used to be the nearby mall will soon be a $1 billion City Creek Center development, which officials hope will be rich with retail establishments, commercial space, and housing of a more Mormonly respectable kind.
Disgruntled city leaders claim that they never wanted to give the Crazy Goat Saloon’s owner a sexually oriented business license to begin with and thus set about changing the law that had allowed its existence. Clubs in the area now must locate themselves exclusively in the city’s west-side industrial zones.
