BRADLEY, Ill. - Local board members have amended the city’s zoning ordinance to more specifically define and regulate adult-oriented businesses. But the area’s two existing adult businesses, Slightly Sinful and Mickey’s Book and Novelty Shop, will be grandfathered in, and may remain at their current locations despite the restricted adult zone.
“We’ve been fighting the city for two years now," said David Johns, Jr., who runs Slightly Sinful with his father. "We’ve filed several appeals and been to court at least ten times.
“An interesting thing was that the community really gathered around us in the last year and a half,” Johns told AVN. “We’ve gathered over twenty thousand signatures, and a lot of these people are folks who haven’t even set foot in the store…they’re local residents and business owners.”
Johns said he’s "ecstatic" about the outcome.
According to The Daily-Journal, the ordinance restricts sexually oriented businesses to specified industrial districts, which comprise about six percent of the area zoned for commercial or business purposes. This area is removed from community areas by at least 500 feet.
The rights of sexually-oriented businesses are protected by the First Amendment, and the Bradley ordinance made it clear that the city was not looking to restrict access by adults to sexually oriented materials, only what it perceives as negative “secondary effects.”
