CAMBRIDGE, Canada - After recently being denied a moving permit, the owner of The Mirage gentlemen's club says he may convert his business to a swinger's establishment.
Owner Len Black said that an offer from a swinger's club in nearby Mississauga to open another such club in Cambridge has caught his eye. "They want to rent space for a swingers' club, which has a much broader range of what's allowed and what's not allowed than a [strip club]," Black told the Cambridge Times.
Black closed down the club last year, in hopes that he could move it a block away, out of a "special use district." Black's potential move was denied on Tuesday, at a general committee meeting. According to the report, the city unanimously found that granting a move to The Mirage would violate the special-use ordinance, as well as another city bylaw that requires clubs to be a minimum of 1,000 meters from each other.
Black told the Cambridge Times that the city council seemed to support the move in his two previous meetings with city staff, only stipulating that "the paperwork would have to go through the normal process."
Black went ahead and shelled out $1.5 million for the Steelworkers Hall, the building he planned on using as the new location.
Chief administrative officer Don Smith told the Cambridge Times that they had made no previous guarantees to Black and warned the move would be a "complicated, time-consuming thing."
Black told the council that Mirage was no longer as profitable as it once was, and he had planned on adding a restaurant, banquet hall and more office space to his business. He will be able to further plead his case for the move at Monday's city meeting, when the council will make its final decision.
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