A recent story noted that changes in the Scottsdale’s Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance will have an immediate impact on at least one adult business, Zorba’s adult video store. Zorba’s may have to undergo a complete overhaul in order to comply with the ordinance.
The new rules, said the report, require adult store managers to have unobstructed views of the entire building, except for bathrooms, with the space illuminated by at least a 40-watt light bulb. No “doors, curtains, walls, merchandise, display racks or other materials” can obscure any part of the business under the rules.
Ryan Gabrielson's story in the East Valley Tribune said that Mayor Mary Manross said the video store rules are necessary to prevent sexual activity at Zorba’s.
“There are many known, documented secondary impacts of those kinds of businesses, especially when you have them configured with private booths,” Manross told Gabrielson.
Despite the Mayor’s concerns about secondary effects, however, police activity logs during the past two years show only three visits to the store.
The new ordinance also targets exotic dance clubs. Changes would ban nude dancing and restrict dancers from coming within four feet of patrons. However, the owners and employees of the city’s two dance clubs, Babe’s - which has been purchased by adult star and AVN Hall of Famer, Jenna Jameson (and friends) and will be renamed Club Jenna after remodeling - and Skin Cabaret, led a referendum drive that gathered more than 8,000 voter signatures, putting the issue on the September ballot.
The report concluded by saying that if passed, the ballot measure would repeal the nudity and distance rules for the clubs, which will enjoy a reprieve from the ordinance until the public vote. Video store provisions in the ordinance, however, were left off the referendum.
