Kids may get X-educated on their way to school
By HOWARD TROXLER
Published December 19, 2004
Well, here's a switch. Normally our society tries extremely hard to keep adult businesses from setting up their shops too close to schools.
But in Hillsborough County, the public school system has turned this struggle on its ear. Hillsborough is building a new school smack in the middle of a bunch of adult businesses.
"There goes the neighborhood!" you can imagine any number of exotic dancers and sellers of porn videos crying.
The school in question is the Carver Exceptional Center, which enrolls about 150 middle school and high school students who face special academic or behavioral challenges. Carver must move from its existing site.
The new location chosen by the Hillsborough County School Board is a parcel in Drew Park that fronts Hubert Avenue on its west side and Lois Avenue on its east.
Across Lois Avenue just to the southeast of the site stands an XTC Adult Supercenter. To the northeast, at the corner of Crest and Lois avenues, there are the twin businesses of Adult World and Lipstixx, which one gathers is some sort of dance club. The sign in the parking lot reads:
Adult World Open 24 hrs,
All VHS Buy 2 Get 1 Free
Lipstixx Now Open!
Dance
Even at 9:30 on a weekday morning, the parking lots of these businesses were quite active, with customers constantly arriving and departing. Out of curiosity I stepped into one of the supercenters, but will report here only that there are many interesting things for sale there.
One reason for putting the new Carver in this neighborhood is the convenient fact the School Board already owns the land. The new Carver will be built between a district maintenance office and a repair shop.
As Times staff writer Melanie Ave reported last week, school officials say they looked for months but couldn't find another location. They said they will build a good fence and the school will face Hubert Avenue, sealed off from the Lois businesses.
Students will not be roaming around the neighborhood, stressed Mary Ellen Elia, chief facilities officer for the school district. They'll be riding buses in and out, and they'll be carefully supervised while they're at school.
"We're not driving them through the Drew Park neighborhood where the shops exist," Elia said.
And yet, in my own scientific fact-finding mission, I did not understand how this could be avoided.
The only approach to the neighborhood from the south is to turn onto Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard off Dale Mabry Highway, then turning north on Lois or Hubert. However, this route by necessity takes you past the Pink Pony on MLK, which features both adult entertainment and an adult supercenter.
(Why are they always "supercenters," by the way? Is it unacceptable merely to be an adult "center"?)
If off MLK you turn onto Lois, on the way to the school you will pass Fantasyland Adult Supercenter (see?), where the sign offers "100 ch peeps/free DVDs & Videos/Couples free!/3 Theaters $5."
If you choose to go up Hubert Avenue instead, your route will take you past the Playhouse Theatre, Body Talk Lingerie (open till 3 a.m.) and Just Girls at the corner of Hubert and Cayuga.
How about north? Well, if you take a right out of the school property onto Hubert, you hit Crest Avenue. Turn left and you'll see Buddies Adult Video at the next corner. If instead you turn right onto Crest off of Hubert, you're back at Lois Avenue, between XTC and Adult World.
Oh, well, it's water over the dam. There is one footnote, though, that I can't resist throwing in. Four years ago, there was a huge political fight over adult businesses.
That fight led to a lawsuit, and to lobbying in the Legislature for a tough state law that would declare once and for all the wrongness of having adult businesses too close to schools. And who was it doing the suing and the lobbying to prevent this terrible evil?
The Hillsborough County School Board, of course.