Fall River Planning Board endorses Flanagan's strict rules for strip clubs

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Written by: 195 on Jan 28, 2010

FALL RIVER The Planning Board, after a public hearing, voted 4-0 to endorse the restrictive adult entertainment ordinance amendment Mayor William Flanagan initiated after winning office. The proposed changes include prohibiting alcohol and requiring any business with a liquor license to relinquish it before opening a strip club.

Patrons at strip clubs also could not touch or tip dancers and other employees.

The board’s recommendation Tuesday night enables the City Council’s Committee on Ordinances & Legislation to address the proposal.

Both the Planning Board and City Council held public hearings Tuesday night, neither lasting more than 10 minutes and with little public comment at either session.

At the council hearing of barely five minutes, only Danny Robillard of 145 Old Second St. criticized Flanagan and the ordinance.

“It’s way too restrictive,” Robillard said, predicting it would not be upheld in a court challenge.

He called it “perplexing” that Flanagan, an attorney, proposed such as ordinance, which is modeled after one adopted in Mendon in 2008.

It would “send the city down another legal path of disaster,” Robillard said, referring to the city's history battling strip clubs in court. Fall River has paid imore than $350,000 in legal fees to fight a club opening.

At the Planning Board hearing, Planning Director James Hartnett endorsed Flanagan’s argument about the impacts of strip clubs on neighborhoods.

He cited national studies involving dozens of municipalities that adverse secondary effects “increase when adult entertainment goes in.”

Those effects include significant increases in crime, decreases in property values, disruption of the business climate and harmful impacts upon public health and welfare, Hartnett said.

He offered three amendments to the 10-page amendment issued to the council in November:

A requirement that a site plan be submitted to the Zoning Board of Appeals rather than to the Planning Board.

Refinement of special permit language calling for an establishment to surrender a liquor license after adult entertainment is approved.

Specification of districts where an adult entertainment license would be prohibited, including residential zones, the central business district, the newly created Arts Overlay District and Industrial Park district.

Since the debate has raged for more than a decade over siting adult entertainment, the Fall River Industrial Park has been targeted by some as the most reasonable location.

Among the two people speaking in favor of the more restrictive ordinance, Dino Bissaro, president of the Niagara Neighborhood Association, said he preferred it be at the Industrial Park.

“We all know these people want adult entertainment,” Bissaro said of the string of proposals, including one addressed this month by the zoning and licensing boards.

Bissaro said the Constitution dictates those businesses be allowed, “but we have rights also,” he said.

He cited the negative secondary effects of sexually oriented businesses. “Hopefully this will go our way,” said Bissaro, a regular critic of adult entertainment. A second person, Helen Rego, also asked the planners to recommend the changes.

Chairman Alan Silvia and planners Ernest Edwards, Al Nadeau and Mario Lucciola adopted them with Hartnett’s proposed changes.

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