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Strip club operator says city violated his rights

samsung1

Ohio

GREENSBORO — The proprietor of a now-closed strip club is suing the city, alleging it violated his constitutional rights and enforced its zoning ordinances unfairly.
John H. Walters and his company, Mary St. Food and Bev., filed suit in U.S. District Court in Greensboro on Thursday.
Walters, who operated the Platinum Cabaret, claims the city's planning director gave him permission to open a sexually oriented business on Mary Street, but then later reneged under pressure from nearby Christie's Cabaret.
Jim Clark, the city's police attorney, said Friday he hasn't seen Walters' suit and could not comment.
The suit is similar to one filed earlier this year by Terry Walsh, who owns the Mary Street building where the Platinum Cabaret used to be.
Walsh has owned the site since 1989, and began leasing it to adult entertainment promoters in 1991.
In May 2012, a judge in Guilford County Superior Court issued an injunction prohibiting the Platinum Cabaret from being used for a sexually oriented business.
The club lost its liquor license about a month later, and closed in July after a rash of crime that included the shooting of two men.
In his suit, Walters said he signed a five-year lease with Walsh in 2009. Prior to signing the $8,500-a-month lease, Walters said he checked with the city's planning department to make sure he could open up an “adult cabaret” at the site, near a mosque and a residential area. The building was also located near Christie's Cabaret.
Zoning ordinances prohibited sexually oriented businesses from operating within 1,000 feet of religious buildings, schools, residences, day care centers and public parks, and from operating within 1,200 feet of another sexually oriented business.
Walters said he received a letter saying the building was grandfathered in, since it hosted adult entertainment before the ordinances were enacted.
Feeling the city had “certified” his business was in the clear as far as zoning was concerned, Walters said he spent about $400,000 getting the place ready.
The suit contends that in early 2010, Christie's Cabaret sent a letter to the planning department requesting a “reconsideration” of the zoning for Walters' club.
The letter raised questions about whether an “adult cabaret” would have been permitted in the building at the time it began hosting adult entertainment. If not, then it would mean that sexually oriented business use was never legally established at the site, and thus it would not be eligible for grandfathering.
Walters' suit contends the city's Board of Adjustment then failed to notify him of a meeting about the issue.
At that meeting in June 2010, the board decided the site was not eligible to be grandfathered in.
The club was nevertheless able to open and remain in business as the matter wound its way through the courts.
In May, police attorney Clark said Christie's Cabaret provided some information to the city about the matter, and said he believed the property “fell into an area where they couldn't operate.”
A woman who answered the phone at Christie's Cabaret Friday, said “we have no comment” on the situation.

http://www.news-record.com/news/governme…