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 Starbucks Center. As he gave an update on Mayor Greg Nickel's proposal to put a strip club zone in Seattle's South End industrial area, 60 local business people, professionals, and residents struck a polite yet pointed tone.
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 I-5 over to ThirdAvenue South, and from South Walker to Dawson Street, just short of the Holgate Bridge down to the railroad tracks. Roughly equal halves extend north and south of the West Seattle Bridge, encompassing 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 idea was floated by the city council at the time to assign the clubs to SODO. Then, South End business and civic leaders united, pressuring the city to drop the proposal, leading to the council establishing 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 near the Westin Hotel, the court ruled in Davis' favor. This development led Mayor Nickels to request legislation from the city council further defining 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 lap dances, Texas couch dances, sticking dollar bills in G-strings, or other 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 the 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 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. The Lusty Lady, across from the downtown Seattle Art Museum, would likely not be affected, as it has a different business model, not based on personal interaction of performers and audience members.
"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.
He admitted that, for the current clubs in Seattle, "There are not a lot of complaints from the neighbors on a sustained basis." 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 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 Interstate 5, the West Seattle Bridge, or State Route 99. Furthermore, a club proprietor would have to obtain a special license from the city for the business, and the establishment's performers would be licensed separately. As of 2005, 554 erotic artists were licensed to dance in Seattle.
A done deal?
According to Yang, councilmember Peter Steinbruek, chair of the Urban Development and Planning Committee, "will shortly announce when the proposal will be taken up" by the city council. It was submitted on Jan. 17 to the council for consideration.
Yang departed at the middle of the meeting for another engagement, leaving little time for audience questions. A resident of an artist cooperative in the center of the proposed district asked, "Would it be possible to apply the 1,000 foot buffer to art co-ops?"
One Georgetown business owner described the strip club districting 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, explained, "Nearly 30 percent of the city's business and occupation taxes come from the Duwamish area, and the city hasn't put much back into it," adding that the industrial district is home to 4,600 businesses with 90,000 employees.
He 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."
A public hearing on the proposed strip club zoning will be scheduled by the city before the council makes a decision.
Craig Thompson may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com[[In-content Ad]]
