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Downtown Commission updates rules to ban strip clubs

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Ohio

Columbus Dispatch-Jun 11, 2013

The city's Downtown Commission now can prohibit adult entertainment clubs and stores. The commission this morning updated its codes and guidelines.

But that doesn't mean the man who proposed a Downtown strip club in April is giving up.

The new rules also ban businesses that were unlikely candidates for Downtown anyway, including amusement parks, animal hide processing facilities, slaughterhouses and salvage yards.

The changes go to the city's Development Commission on Thursday, then to City Council.

Marc Conte, deputy director of the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District and a board member of the Downtown Residents Association of Columbus, said he supports the changes.

Conte said as Downtown grows as a residential neighborhood — it now has about 6,200 residents — some businesses don't mix with houses.

The Downtown residents group came out against the “gentlemen's club” — a strip bar — at the site of a former gay bar at 205 N. 5th St., just north of Spring Street.

The commission in April said it didn't have the authority to consider the proposal because city code allows new adult businesses only in areas zoned for manufacturing, and Downtown was never included as part of that.

The Downtown District code neither prohibited nor allowed adult entertainment.

At the time, one of the strip club's principals, Charles Fischer, said he submitted his paperwork for a certificate of appropriateness to the city before any code changes were finalized.

He said yesterday his proposal isn't dead — yet. “The lawyers are looking into it,” Fischer said. “I'm kind of leaving it in their hands.”