Strict new zoning rules now reaching the final stage of a nearly yearlong legal battle could force many adult-oriented businesses in New York City to close, bringing highly visible changes to the neighborhoods in which the stores have clustered, the New York Times reported.
"What they've done is made it impossible for these guys to stay in business," said Herald Price Fahringer, the lawyer for a coalition of about 75 video stores and X-rated theaters challenging the restrictions in court, told the Times. "If this law were to be upheld, 85 percent of all the stores would have to close."
The new regulations, said John Feinblatt, the city's criminal justice coordinator, would establish a "common-sense test" for whether a business qualifies as a sex shop, according to the report. Peep shows, signs excluding minors, and other features would all qualify a business as a sex shop and subject it to the more stringent regulations that govern such establishments, he said.
Under those rules, established in 1995, sex shops are banned from residential and most commercial zones, the newspaper said. They are allowed in industrial zones and some commercial ones, including parts of Eighth Avenue, the garment district in Midtown, and the West Side of Manhattan. But there is a catch: No sex shop may sit within 500 feet of another such business, of a zone from which they are prohibited, or of "sensitive receptors" like schools or houses of worship.
Feinblatt said that should the new regulations go into effect, the city would immediately begin re-inspecting sex shops to see if they were in compliance, the Times reported.
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