U.S. court asked to remove zoning barrier to strip club

A 2,000-foot setback rule has stalled plans to open an adult cabaret on a property divided by a city-county boundary.

By JEFF TESTERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 18, 2000

TAMPA -- Keith Johnson's plans to put a $1.5-million adult cabaret next to his adult bookstore on East Fowler Avenue have been stymied by an invisible line that cuts his 1.32-acre site in half.

The line divides the city of Tampa from unincorporated Hillsborough County, an unusual demarcation that has made it impossible for Johnson to gain city and county approval for the necessary parking permit for his exotic dance club to go forward.

This week, Johnson took his dispute to a higher court, the U.S. District Court in Tampa. Johnson's attorney, Luke Lirot, filed a lawsuit Monday which challenges the county's adult use ordinance, claiming the law violates Johnson's constitutional rights, is an "unlawful exercise of the state's police power" and amounts to an unauthorized taking of Johnson's property.

Lirot is taking particular aim on the provision of the county's ordinance requiring a 2,000-foot setback from residential property, a provision which until 1986 was 500 feet.

Just inside the 2,000-foot measurement north of Johnson's property are a row of small, one-story apartments, but they are separated from the proposed adult cabaret by woods where several homeless men occasionally sleep, a high fence topped by barbed wire and a large parking lot.

"I can't for the life of me see how a patron would leave that club, climb over the fence, tromp through the woods and through what is actually a hobo camp and then come to these apartments and pose some negative impact on some poor resident back there," Lirot said.

County Commissioner Jim Norman, whose district includes the site of the proposed cabaret, has another view.

"We don't feel it's appropriate to have these businesses close to our neighborhoods," Norman said. "The higher criminal activity that occurs in these parking lots is why we need these buffers."

The federal lawsuit is filed against Hillsborough County by ALMJ Inc., the owner of the Fowler Avenue property, and by 1212 Fowler Inc., which leases the property from ALMJ. Johnson, who declined comment Tuesday, is the sole director listed for both ALMJ and 1212 Fowler.

ALMJ won approval from the city in June 1998 for a 960-square-foot sex shop on a former used car lot at 1210-1212 Fowler Ave. E, on the north side of the eight-lane highway, across the street from a Hops restaurant and a Toys 'R Us store, about a half-mile east of Nebraska Avenue.

The store, called Xtreme Adult Books and Videos, features X-rated videos priced from $4.95 to $49.95, prophylactics, sex toys, sexually oriented magazines and a dozen "peep show" booths, where patrons pay $2 to see 13 minutes of a loop of an adult video.

Eight months after the initial zoning okay, ALMJ sought additional approval for a bar with seating for 300 people on the county side of the property. County officials, aware of the sex shop on the city side of the property, gave the bar plan their blessings since state alcohol laws would prohibit nudity at the proposed bar.

Then, in August 1999, ALMJ returned with a request to amend its original permit to expand from a 48-by-60-foot prefabricated metal building to a 3,780-square-foot adult cabaret.

The problem turned out to be parking provisions.

The city requires 41 parking spaces for the cabaret, where there is now room for just 20. Lirot asked that the needed 21 spaces be "borrowed" from the county side of the property, where spaces currently exceed county requirements by 33.

The county said no.

County officials decreed that the borrowed parking would have to be considered adult use parking. Since the county's adult use setbacks are stiffer than the city's, the nearness of the low-rise apartments spelled defeat for the parking plan.

"We don't believe the adult use, the cabaret, would impact the residential areas, so we obviously don't think the (borrowed) parking would impact them, either," Lirot said.

Lirot appealed the county's land use decision, but the appeal was denied Sept. 15. With no other remedy available, Lirot turned to litigation.

"We don't think the county had anything except bad feelings about adult clubs when they went from a 500-foot setback to 2,000 feet," Lirot said. "It's arbitrary. It's oppressive."

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