Mayor Randy Fitts and City Attorney Craig Hall made it somewhat official on April 7 - they're going to revise city law to outlaw nude dancing within South Salt Lake bounds. "We're saying we'll be very aggressive at looking at what we can do to ban these... from the city," he told a news conference that day. Say attorneys for four nude dance clubs: We'll see you in court, if necessary.
Fitts and the South Salt Lake City Council insisted Hall work on a draft law over the next 45 days to redefine public nudity and ban dancing in the birthday suit. If the law is passed, it would all but drive Paradise Adult Entertainment, American Bush and Leather & Lace to dress the dancers and apply for semi-nude-dance permits - or potentially set up elsewhere.
That's because South Salt Lake has four semi-nude clubs now, according to the Salt Lake City Tribune, meaning no guarantee the other three clubs would get permits; South Salt Lake statutes now limit sex-related businesses to one for every 6,000 residents, and there are an estimated 18,600 living in the area in question now.
One of the attorneys for the nude clubs, Andrew McCullough, told the Tribune the clubs' owners would sue to stop any bid to close their businesses. McCullough's been there before, and against the same opponent: He beat South Salt Lake last September, when the state Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling letting South Salt Lake block a license for Leather & Lace for moving within 600 feet of a semi-nude club. The state high court said South Salt Lake screwed up its own law's enforcement by calling the distance from property to property, rather than building to building, according to state records.
That's what makes McCullough think he'll win again in this case, if necessary. "From my point of view," he told the Tribune, "there's only one winner in this thing - me. I'll be in court with bells on."
