Video Showcase had been one of the area’s biggest adult stores, packed with about 60,000 adult video titles.
Today, the store’s shelves are looking a lot emptier as city officials began an enforcement effort in recent weeks of a 2001 law that requires adult businesses to have less than 20 percent of their inventory to adult videos and novelties to remain in their current locations or they must move to the city’s industrial area on the edge of town if they can’t comply, the Miami Herald reported.
Patricia Lamicella, who owns Video Showcase, says she can do little other than put much of her inventory in storage to meet the law’s requirements. As it is, the store is no longer classified an as an adult business and is allowed to stay in place.
But strip clubs like the Fantasy Lounge along Griffin Road have been told to move to the city’s industrial areas. The club’s owner, however, says he’s staying put.
Earlier this month, the lounge’s lawyers sued the city, claming that the law is being used to run them out of town and uses irrelevant studies to demonstrate that adult businesses are responsible for additional crime in the city.
But Mayor Pat Flury says local adult businesses must meet the city’s guidelines or move elsewhere.
Dania Beach's other adult businesses, Your A to X Video Outlet and the Fetish Box also were told to comply by the end of September or move out.
Under the measure, adult businesses were also required to be at least 1,000 feet from homes, churches and other public facilities and must be located in industrial areas or those meant for office, research o marine use. Moreover, adult businesses had until 2004 to move. But none have moved so far.
But David Scott, a lawyer who represents the Fantasy Lounge, said that courts have ruled that cities can zone adult businesses to certain areas, but they can’t change their zoning law if it leaves adult businesses with nowhere to go in the city.
Scott cited a case involving the Lollipop’s Gentlemen’s Club v. City of Daytona Beach where a federal judge ruled that city had violated the First and Fourteenth amendments.
He added that he believes Dania Beach’s zoning rules were enacted to force his client out of town.
But City Manager Ivan Pato denied this, saying that the city's long term plans call for the relocation of adult businesses to more "appropriate" areas.
Already, attorneys for A to X Video Outlet and the Fetish Box have hired real estate consultants to find them alternative locations for those businesses.
