Belltown Messenger

Seattle's relationship with strip clubs (or, as our city code quaintly puts it, "adult entertainment premises") is long and fraught and may soon be coming to an end.

Way back in 1988, the city council passed an emergency moratorium on the issuance of new permits for adult establishments. It was set to last six months. But ever since, the city council has dutifully renewed the "temporary" moratorium as an ad hoc solution to the politically complicated (and potentially unpopular) process of passing new zoning regulations regarding the development of new clubs.

For many Seattlites, the moratorium may, at first, seem to be a good thing. Strip clubs have a notoriously bad reputation for having a negative impact on communities, and there's a sense that we may even be ahead of the curve. seedy strip club New York City, after all, didn't get around to cleaning up Times Square until 1997, giving Seattle a decade lead on "America's city." But the reality is that Seattle's ham handed attempt to regulate strip clubs is likely about to come back to bite it, and those who will suffer are - unsurprisingly - the citizens.

At issue is the most recent renewal of the temporary moratorium. Bob Davis, a comedy club owner who has been seeking to open a strip club for years, filed suit in court following the May 9th city council action. His suit seeks $5 million in lost revenue from the city, and he has a case. For one thing, stripping and nude performance in general is a First Amendment protected form of expression, and the city is limited in regulating it to "protecting a vital government interest." That legitimately applies to, say, zoning regulations preventing a club from opening next to a grade school. But a fifteen year temporary moratorium comes close to becoming a back door administrative ban which can be overturned on Constitutional grounds, potentially leaving the city at least temporarily without zoning restrictions and saddled with a judicial obligation to facilitate granting permits for new clubs.

But even more questionable is the council's reasoning for the moratorium. The moratorium has granted a de facto monopoly to currently operating clubs who have a vested financial interest in preventing more competition from entering the market. While no direct evidence of clubs lobbying to extend the moratorium has currently come to light, the widely reported "Strippergate" scandal closely linked at least one club owner to city councilors. Frank Colacurcio Jr., the owner of Rick's on Lake City Way, donated large amounts of money to the reelection campaigns of several incumbent city councilors in an effort to facilitate an expansion of his parking area. Part of the moratorium limits development of premises that are in legal noncompliance (that is, they operate because they were in operation before restrictions were passed), making an expansion of his parking area difficult to come by without jeopardizing the entire ban. Further damning is the fact that Rick's is also at the center of an ongoing FBI investigation of the Seattle Police Department. In February, the SPD announced that at least one officer, Rusty Leslie, had been reprimanded for close conduct with performers at Rick's, which was at the time subject to undercover investigations by SPD detectives. The department further admitted that one officer may have even passed sealed information to a dancer regarding a Kirkland murder investigation in which her husband was a suspect.

Further, there have been accusations of club owners like Colacurcio trying to put up obstructions to Davis' quest to open up competition. One person with a long history of involvement in Seattle's adult entertainment world, speaking on condition of anonymity, asserted that current club owners had retained as many lawyers with experience in this field as possible, both to fight their case and to try to prevent Davis from finding qualified representation. As such, the rage someone like Bob Davis feels at the current situation is understandable. "The more I think about it, the more it drives up my blood pressure," he was reported as saying following the May extension of the moratorium.

For several years, Davis has been walking a legal tightrope. His business, the Urban Comedy Club at Fifth and Virginia, started featuring nearly nude dancers on weekends, skirting the typical strip club regulations. He can even serve liquor, but the the top amenities and most profitable attractions, like lap dances, are off-limits - Davis' dancers have to be at least six feet from patrons.

In short, Belltown could soon be home to Seattle's first new strip club in seventeen years. While it may be of cold comfort to residents, Davis has often sought to differentiate himself from the likes of Colacurcio. In a May 2004 interview with The Seattle Times, he said bluntly, "I don't run fleabag clubs," and said he envisioned a non-smoking "gentleman's club." Davis has some allies in government. Councilman Peter Steinbrueck has been particularly critical of the city's current policy, telling reporters a year ago that, "Why wait for a lawsuit that exposes the city to financial damages and permits (strip clubs) anywhere in the city where business is allowed?" As of yet, his attempts to establish zoning requirements to allow for the issuance of new permits has gone unheeded. In 2004, the city council, upon renewing the moratorium, sent the issue to the mayor's office and the zoning commission to establish regulations. As of yet little work appears to have been done.