After a decade-long battle with the city, adult retailer the Fetish Box — a specialist in leather and latex — has decided to close its doors. Store owners Sean Newman and Denise Earlman told The Miami Herald that after a decade of fighting, they "just need a break."
Newman and Earlman said they might get back into the business, but not in Dania Beach.
''This town is just going nowhere,'' Newman told The Herald.
Despite its economic successes in a town of failed businesses, Newman and Earlman never made any friends at City Hall.
"We want to leave people with a better impression when they come through our city," Commissioner Anne Castro told The Herald. "Most cities zone those kinds of stores in more industrial areas where you would not find families or tourists."
According to the report, the Fetish Box survived a crackdown on signs in 1998; a request from a developer who asked the city to turn it into a hospitality center for tourists in 1999; and its inclusion in the city's Community Redevelopment Agency.
The final blow came last year, when city officials began retroactively enforcing zoning laws from 2001 which required all adult-oriented businesses to move to industrial or office areas. Newman told The Herald that they considered relocating but couldn't find a suitable location in the designated zones.
