The popular Gallery has been fined over $300,000 and ordered to close for violating zoning laws, becoming the third adult business ordered to close in recent months here. Local officials trying to rid this town of adult businesses were reported pleased by the Gallery shutdown.
The Gallery's owner says the community and the state are using zoning laws as a way of controlling and even censoring entertainment, adding he opened the club in a heavily industrialized zone featuring swamps and factories believing no one would complain about the location.
Carlstadt at one time had five adult businesses in town, but one closed and will re-open as a restaurant while the other's owner wants to convert to a sports restaurant. And local officials are pushing to close down the remaining two adult businesses by way of redevelopment zones leading to condemnation proceedings.
"We're going after every one of them," Mayor William Roseman tells the Bergen Record. "They will all be gone within a year."
Existing regulations allow entertainment only as a correlation at a restaurant, the Record says, but state attorneys argued the Gallery's advertisements showed food wasn't the primary draw - showing flyers advertising 100 nude dancers and such sayings as "Come eat, drink and be part of the fantasy."
