A packed house greeted Sung Yang, senior policy advisor to Mayor Greg Nickels, at the March 9 joint meeting of the Rotary Club of SODO and the South Downtown Business Association at Starbuck Center, where he gave an update on Nickels' proposal to put a strip-club zone in Seattle's South End industrial area.
After welcoming members and guests, business association president Mike Perringer tactfully introduced Yang and "the issue of the gentlemen's clubs."
"Adult nude dancing is a form of free expression," Yang said. "From a land-use standpoint, we had to place this use somewhere in the city."
He described the proposal as "a conscientious effort to make sure Seattle would not be a strip club-friendly city."
The proposed area extends from Interstate 5 over to Third Avenue South, and from South Walker to Dawson streets, just short of the South Holgate Street overpass, down to the railroad tracks. The area encompasses 333 parcels spread over 310 acres.
Stripping rules
This is not the first time a proposal making SODO a venue for voyeurism has come to public scrutiny. After the number of clubs in the city grew from two in 1986 to seven in 1988, the City Council floated the idea at the time to assign the clubs to SODO.
Then, South End business and civic leaders united, pressuring the city to drop the proposal and leading to the council to establish a moratorium on new clubs. The City Council rubberstamped annual extensions of the moratorium each following year.
Last fall, after 17 years, the moratorium was overturned by a federal judge. When Bob Davis sued, wanting to put a strip club downtown by the Westin Hotel, the court ruled in Davis' favor. This development led mayor Nickels to request City Council legislation that further defines conduct in adult cabarets.
Currently, city government is taking a two-prong approach to controlling strip clubs in Seattle. The first is behavior modification, and the second is zoning the clubs to a restricted location.
Passed by the council last October, legislation places several rules on the strip-club performers. They must maintain a 4-foot distance from customers, which means there can be no personal contact. Tips for dances must be placed in jars. Club lighting must be as bright as an average parking garage, and there can be no private rooms.
Previous law forbade touching in the clubs, but was routinely ignored, so the success of new, similar rules is questionable. Still, these restrictions may make it easier for vice-squad officers to see illegal acts inside the clubs.
The city's strategy is to make the clubs unprofitable and so stop striptease in Seattle. However, club owners successfully gathered enough signatures for a referendum to force a popular vote that could overturn the restrictions.
A recent KING-5 TV poll suggests that up to 80 percent of voters in Seattle would cast ballots to repeal the council's legislation. The King County Election Office has verified the signatures.
"The council will decide when it will be on the ballot," Yang said.
A new location
A successful challenge to the "4-foot rule" will not affect the second part of the city's challenge to striptease: redistricting SODO for strip clubs.
Frank Colacurcio's three North Seattle clubs would not be affected by the rezoning of SODO, but the city regulations - if they withstand the referendum - could make them unprofitable for management while denying income to the dancers, who work for tips.
"There are areas where strip clubs cannot go," Yang told the crowd at Thursday's meeting. "We tried to approach the issue having criteria of who we wanted to protect in the city."
A 1,000-foot buffer exists for explicit exhibitions, keeping them away from schools, parks, community centers, churches and other public arenas. He pointed at a large map of Seattle where excluded areas in pink overwhelmed available ones in yellow. SODO and Interlake stood out as available areas.
The proposed strip club district and the behavior modifications are meant to curb "secondary harmful effects," like drug dealing and prostitution that may occur inside the establishments.
In SODO, the zone would exclude the Seattle School District headquarters - where instruction takes place - plus the U.S. Postal Service facility, the Sound Transit station on South Lander Street, and Washington State's Secure Community Transition Facility for Level-3 sex offenders. Under the mayor's proposal, the size of a strip club would be limited to 5,000 square feet.
"Restaurants and bars have the same limit in industrial zones," Yang explained before adding that "they will be closed from 2:30 to 10 a.m."
The city plans to substantially limit the size of any outside club signage by making roof and pole signs not visible from I-5, the West Seattle Bridge or state Route 99.
Furthermore, a club proprietor would need to obtain a special business license from the city, and the establishment's performers would be licensed separately. As of 2005, 554 erotic artists were licensed to dance in Seattle.
A done deal?
One Georgetown business owner described the strip-club redistricting as a "done deal" and expressed hope for mitigation that would move the southern border of the district away from Georgetown's business and residential core.
David Huchthausen, chair of the Duwamish Planning Committee and a member of the executive committee of the Manufacturing Industrial Council, summarized the mayor's strip club-zone proposal: "It's one in a long series of actions the city has taken that has degraded the industrial area."
According to Yang, the City Council take up the matter "shortly." It was submitted on Jan. 17 for council consideration. The city will schedule a public hearing on the proposed strip-club zoning before the City Council makes a decision.
Craig Thompson may be reached via needitor@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
