City looks to
rezone, restrict
places for adult
entertainment

Many Oahu adult businesses
would be confined to industrial
districts under a City Council plan

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Star-Bulletin

Many adult entertainment businesses on Oahu would be confined to industrial-zoned districts under a plan making its way through the City Council.

While a constitutional law expert says the restrictions are valid, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union says the city needs to be careful.

The plan covers adult bookstores, video parlors and theaters but not liquor-serving establishments. Councilman Andy Mirikitani, who introduced the resolution, said he may attempt to include strip bars.

City attorneys recently said the Council would not be encroaching on the jurisdiction of the Liquor Commission if it put zoning-related restrictions on bars.

The resolution that moved out of the Council Zoning Committee yesterday orders the city planners to come up with a bill that would:

Permit adult establishments only in the commercial business, industrial and industrial mixed-use districts.

Restrict adult establishments from being within 500 feet of a place of worship, day-care facility, school or college. An adult establishment would also be restricted from residential, apartment, apartment mixed-use, resort or B-1 zones.

Restrict adult establishments from being within 500 feet of one another except in an industrial or industrial mixed-use district.

Prohibit more than one adult establishment on a single zoning lot and from exceeding 10,000 square feet in size.

If such restrictions are approved by the Council, existing establishments that are in violation would have a year to conform, move or shut down.

University of Hawaii professor Jon Van Dyke, a constitutional law expert, said the city can restrict types of businesses to certain areas.

To pass constitutional muster, the city must provide enough remaining locations for the adult establishments to move, he said.

Van Dyke suggested that city planners plot out a map of existing adult establishments and areas they would be allowed.

Sandy Ma, ACLU legal director, said the city will need to go further.

"You have to leave ample alternatives for these businesses to relocate to," Ma said. "You have to keep in mind the economics of a business and the nature of the property area being relocated to."

The city, she said, can't institute such a law "with the sole goal of zoning them out of existence."

Mirikitani said he wants the bill patterned after one in New York. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected legal challenges to the New York law, which prohibits sex-themed theaters, massage parlors, bookstores and dance clubs from operating within 500 feet of homes, houses of worship, schools and each other.