SCOTTSDALE, AZ – The Scottsdale City Council is scheduled to vote on changes to the city’s “sexually oriented” business regulations on November 15th, changes which the Council has held closed-door sessions to discuss in recent weeks, and about which no information has been made public thus far.While no officials have commented on the specifics of the revisions under consideration, Councilman Jim Lane said that any changes to the Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance will be designed to ensure they do not violate the First Amendment, since stripper’s performances have been ruled a form of free speech.
The intensified governmental interest in the city’s strip clubs, Skin Cabaret and Babe’s Cabaret, began when rumors surfaced that adult film star Jenna Jameson had purchased a share of Babe’s. These rumors were officially confirmed last month, when it was disclosed that Jameson had entered into a partnership with Vivid Entertainment CEO Steven Hirsh, Vivid President Bill Asher and New Jersey-based producer/distributor Frank Koretsky, with each party owning a 25% share of the club.
Under Scottsdale’s Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance, erotic dancers are prohibited from making contact “using their hands or any other part of their body… contact with the breasts, buttocks, anus or genitals of any other person”, and their patrons are likewise restricted from making contact with the dancers.
In the summer of 2003, former City Attorney David Pennartz, who felt that the ordinance might not hold up in federal court, instructed Scottsdale’s police and prosecutors to stop enforcing the regulations, because he felt the ordinance might not hold up in federal court. Indeed, a 2004 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals has forced the city to alter its ordinance, although the Scottsdale city attorney’s office has said that most of the regulations will remain intact.
The south Scottsdale are where both Skin and Babe’s are located is an neighborhood that the city has plans to “revitalize”, including the addition of a major research facility, the Arizona State University Center for New Technology and Innovation, to be built on the southeast corner of McDowell and Scottsdale roads – directly across the street from Skin Cabaret.
Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross and several City Council members have pledged to the clubs down, voicing concerns over not only the nature of the clubs, but in the case of Babe’s, the owners themselves.
“It is a concern to us,” Scottsdale City Manager Jan Dolan said earlier this year. “We have a very positive cachet with our name, and do we want to get it connected to the porn industry?”
