The struggle over adult-use zoning in Northampton shouldn’t be seen as just an effort to keep one porn shop from 135 King Street. When one adult entertainment business establishes itself in an area, it makes it easy for others to follow. The Boston Globe reports from Salisbury, MA: With two adult clubs already established and a third […]
Secondary Effects
Why Hollywood Reached for Zoning: Crime, Business Failure, Tourists Fleeing
As we noted in an earlier post, Hollywood moved to beef up its adult-use zoning in 1990 to respond to crime and economic blight. This Wall Street Journal article from 1997 underscores how hard it can be for neighborhoods to recover when adult businesses have concentrated there. Sex shops weren’t the only factor in Hollywood’s […]
State Land-Use Planner: “Once the ‘use’ is located in your community, it’s very difficult to get rid of them”
The Union-News takes a broad look at adult-use zoning in “Zone laws can restrict sex shops”, 12/1/95: X-rated entertainment may be protected by the First Amendment, but communities are finding other legal ways to restrict its growth. Chagrined Hadley officials awoke in October to find an X-rated book and video store at the town’s busiest […]
Chicopee Noted Springfield, Holyoke Problems with Adult Businesses, Passed Zoning Regulations in 1993 and 1994
In 1994, Chicopee aldermen unanimously approved regulations on adult businesses. These included keeping them at least 500 feet from schools, libraries, parks, playgrounds and recreational areas. The Union-News reported, Several aldermen on the 13-member body pointed to recurring problems and ongoing struggles in cities such as Springfield and Holyoke which do not have laws on […]
Springfield Citizens Beat Back an Expansion of Their Capital Video Porn Shop
Capital Video has had a porn shop at 486 Bridge Street in Springfield since 1990. Many citizens and local businesses were unhappy about it from the start. To protest the shop, residents Leslie Pasquini and her husband Ronald “helped garner 600 signatures sent to [District Attorney William M.] Bennett.” (Union-News, 1/24/92, p. 20)City Councilor William […]
New York City Porn Shops Depress Demand for Neighboring Properties
From The New York Times, “Sex-Related Shops Make Comeback Near Times Sq.”, 3/15/05… Ten years after Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared war on Times Square’s X-rated peep shows, strip joints and video stores, shops selling sexually explicit materials have slowly begun to creep back into the area, adroitly exploiting loopholes in the law–and property-owners’ demand […]
Even Hollywood Moved to Crack Down on Its Adult Businesses
Even Hollywood, hardly a center of conservative prudishness, years ago decided stricter adult-use zoning was in order… City and law enforcement officials long ago concluded that much of the prostitution, lewd behavior and other crime as well as the general seediness that plagues Hollywood emanates from the concentration of pornography shops in the area. Now, […]
People Prefer to Buy Porn Outside Their Own Neighborhoods
An observation from The New York Times undercuts the oft-heard argument that if local people truly don’t want a porn shop, it will wither away: People do not, as a rule, buy pornography in their own neighborhoods. As a result, pornography and sex-aid stores tend to be near mass transit, ideally as near as possible, […]
Not All Happy with Porn Shops in Greenwich Village
Peter Brooks from Talk Back Northampton asserted in a recent Northampton City Council meeting that the residents of Greenwich Village in New York coexist happily with their sex shops. The New York Times reports this isn’t completely true: At a recent community meeting in the Village, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was pelted for more than […]
Local Businesses Say Porn Shop Hurts Downtown Ypsilanti
If some people have a hard time applying New York City’s experience with adult businesses to Northampton, let’s consider a situation in Ypsilanti, Michigan, a college town with a population of 22,000. Don Herzog, a professor at The University of Michigan Law School, writes on the blog Left2Right, on April 14, 2005… A block and a […]