DANIA BEACH, FL – “We’re going to be doing an entire overhaul just to stay in business,” Patricia Lamicella, owner of the Dania Beach video store Video Showcase, told the Miami Herald. “It’s pretty brutal. It’s very hard, but we have no option. This is my only business.”The “overhaul” Lamicella referred to is the removal of adult videos from her shelves – nearly two-thirds of Video Showcase’s total inventory.
It’s all part of avoiding prosecution under a renewed effort on the part of the city to enforce a law passed in 2001, under which adult businesses must either relocate to an industrial neighborhood on the edge of town or change their establishment so as to avoid being classified as an “adult establishment.”
Under the ordinance, any business that devotes less than 20-percent of its floor space to adult videos, novelties, or other adult products is not considered an adult businesses, and is allowed to continue operating at its current location, according to the Herald.
By removing the bulk of her products from the shelves, Lamicella is hoping to avoid running afoul of the ordinance – and hoping she can squeak by financially, given the enormous hit to her store’s bottom line.
Lamicella concedes that her store looks pretty bare at the moment, but said that “if we want to stay, we really don’t have an option but to comply.”
Other local businesses, mostly topless bars that have greater financial resources than a shop like Lamicella’s, are fighting the City’s ordinance, arguing that the ordinance is nothing but a poorly veiled attempt to run them out of town.
Under the ordinance, the Fantasy Lounge on Griffin Road would also have to move out into an industrial area, but lawyers for the club have filed suit against the city, arguing that the law effectively zones adult businesses out of the city and that the city has used irrelevant and flawed data to support it’s claims of “negative secondary effects” presented by adult businesses.
The law passed in 2001 gave all the city’s businesses until 2004 to relocate to an industrial zone – primarily isolated areas just off Interstate 95 – or to change their business something that would not be subject to the ordinance.
None of businesses moved in the interim, leading to an impasse between the City and its adult businesses.
“Relocating these X-rated operations in the city I think is essential,” said Dania Beach Mayor Pat Flury, according to the Herald.
The problem with the city’s requirements, say opponents, is that they offer no flexibility and appear designed to simply push area adult businesses out of operation altogether.
“Basically, they [adult businesses] can’t be within 1,000 feet of anything,” said David Scott, attorney for the Fantasy Lounge.
Indeed, the law requires that such businesses cannot be located with 1,000 feet of any residential property, “houses of worship”, schools, establishments that sell alcohol or public parks.
The scarcity of available locations under the ordinance could prove its undoing, Scott noted.
“The courts have ruled you can zone these types of businesses to a particular area, but if with that zoning scheme the end result is they have nowhere to go, that violates their First Amendment rights,” Scott told the Herald.
Ivan Pato, Dania’s City Manager, characterized the renewed enforcement of the 2001 law “part of a long-term plan announced many years ago to relocate these businesses to a more appropriate area,” according to the Herald.
“This is just one of many rezoning undertakings that we’re in the middle of,” added Pato. “We’re not singling anyone out.”
Attorneys for another local adult business, Your A to X Video Outlet, hired a real estate firm to scout for possible locations that would comport with the city’s law and where the store could continue to operate, as-is. Factoring in the distance requirements, the firm concluded that no such location existed within the city.
“Our expert has determined that in actuality there are no places within the city of Dania Beach that an adult entertainment establishment, as you classified my client, can locate lawfully,” A to X attorney James Benjamin wrote in a letter to the city, according to the Herald.
While others take to the courts, at smaller businesses like the Fetish Box, owners have consolidated their stocks of videos and novelties in order to occupy less floor space, hoping to squeeze into the city’s “less than 20-percent” exception.
Lamicella says that for a business like hers, moving isn’t even an option.
“I don’t have any other source of income,” Lamicella said. “This has been my store for a long time.”
