Today’s Republican reports that several ordinances strengthening Northampton’s adult-use regulation are on Thursday’s City Council agenda. These ordinances, all approved by Northampton’s Planning Board, will regulate the signage of adult businesses, restrict businesses with porn viewing booths to Northampton’s Highway Business Zone and at least 500 feet from homes and schools, and similarly restrict all large […]
Ordinances and Regulations
Breaking News: Northampton Planning Board Approves Adult Use Size/Location Ordinance
After a long debate with citizens making arguments for and against adult use zoning, Northampton’s Planning Board approved an ordinance to regulate the location of large adult businesses. If a business has more than 1,000 square feet of adult material on display, it must be located in Northampton’s Highway Business Zone and be at least […]
VIP General Manager: Zoning, Community Protest Are Factors in Porn Shop Location Decisions
VIP (Very Intimate Pleasures) has giant sex shops in Hartford, New Haven/Orange and Manchester, and they’d like to expand. Sometimes they encounter resistance. Recently city officials and residents countered their plans for another Connecticut location (Berlin) with a new ordinance.What factors does VIP general manager Rick Lederman weigh when searching for new sites?“There’s a lot to […]
Gazette: “Hearing to take up porn regs on Thursday”
Monday’s Gazette notes an important public meeting is on tap this week. We encourage all concerned citizens to attend. If there hasn’t been enough public discussion yet on the issue of pornography in the city, there’s yet another opportunity this week, when the Planning Board and Ordinance Committee continue a public hearing on proposed regulations […]
Giuliani Understood How “Small Things” Matter
Richard Morgan writes about Rudy Giuliani’s approach to adult use regulation for City Journal in “Free to Strip?”From the drumbeat of criticism, you’d think that something Orwellian had gripped Mayor Giuliani’s New York. “His vision is…authoritarian, repressive, and antithetical to our rich tradition of tolerance for the right to protest and dissent,” thunders New York […]
Residents and Officials of Berlin, Connecticut Team Up to Resist Porn Shop Planned Next to Homes
A porn chain called VIP is trying to purchase a former Huffman Koos furniture store located at 717 Berlin Turnpike in Berlin, CT. The plan is to turn the site into a adult book store and novelty shop. VIP wants to devote over 14,000 square feet to adult DVDs, books, lingerie and other sexual-related items. Homes are located […]
NPN Submits More Petition Signatures to Mayor, Total Tops 1,100
NoPornNorthampton today submitted 201 new petition signatures to Mayor Higgins at the City Council meeting. The petition calls for Northampton to adopt adult-use zoning and viewing booth health regulations. This group of signatures was collected between August 18 and October 5. Northampton residents represent 167 of the signatures, with 34 more coming from non-residents.Since our petition […]
Gazette: “Proposed rules for ‘adult’ businesses find favor”
Wednesday’s Gazette reports on the 9/28 ordinance committee/planning board meeting. It notes how residents near 135 King Street expressed concern about a porn shop locating there: “It’s a neighborhood that has made halfway houses and recovery programs welcome,” Mike Kirby, of 17 Summer St., said of the area around the proposed adult video store. “It’s […]
New York City Planners Document Secondary Effects of Adult Uses, Support Zoning
Porn defenders tend to dismiss the notion of secondary effects, that adult uses can reduce property values, create economic dead zones, heighten crime and change a neighborhood’s character. The fact is, however, that secondary effects have been extensively studied and documented. Here we make available a major Adult Entertainment Study published by New York City’s […]
The Republican: “Anti-porn plan advances”
Today’s Republican reports on progress in regulating adult businesses in Northampton: In what some called a first step in the fight to restrict pornography in Northampton, the Planning Board and the Ordinance Committee last night both approved bans against adult viewing booths in most sections of the city…The viewing-booth measure now goes to the City […]