Strippers at a downtown bar might be doing their thing for some time while the courts contemplate the constitutionality of a Provo law that attempts to force them to the outskirts of town.
"I'd like to hope it won't go on for years. It's already gone on long enough," Mayor Lewis Billings said. "We don't want this kind of facility in downtown Provo."Subdued city officials were in no mood to shimmy-shake after a decision in 4th District Court on Monday that allows LeMar's Nightclub to keep its semi-nude dancers for the time being.
Judge Howard H. Maetani all but issued a temporary injunction preventing Provo from administering a new law that attempts to prohibit strippers at LeMar's Nightclub, 210 W. Center St. Maetani ordered the status quo for at least the next 30 days while he decides on LeMar's request for the injunction. Provo intended to enforce the ordinance beginning Monday.
LeMar's is the only establishment in the city featuring strippers.
"I won't say we won't go in and look at what's going on, but we won't take any enforcement action," said David Dixon, assistant city attorney.
After he rules on the injunction, which either side might appeal to the Utah Supreme Court, Maetani has some bigger issues to weigh.
LeMar's attorney Andrew J. McCullough is challenging the constitutionality of Provo's so-called sexually oriented business law and a zoning ordinance that bans such enterprises from downtown. The laws violates LeMar's First Amendment rights, he said.
"I think (Maetani) is willing to listen to us. Obviously he's going to struggle with this. Obviously he's going to think about it," McCullough said after the hearing.
The judge said he doesn't have enough information to decide the matter on its merits. He put attorneys for both sides on a tight schedule to keep the case moving. Maetani set a trail date for January 1999, although he said he'd clear his calendar sooner if the parties are ready.
McCullough questions whether the city can force LeMar's to close its exotic dancing room with laws the City Council adopted after the nightclub started strip shows last summer. Provo issued the bar a sexually oriented business license in June based on a 1989 ordinance that officials at the time deemed as restrictive as any in the state.
"It has been in place for some time. All we did was comply with it," he said.
But the city rewrote the ordinances in December under intense public pressure from residents who don't want strippers downtown or anywhere in Provo for that matter.
Maetani noted in court that Provo could have adopted a stricter zoning law a decade ago based on a 1986 benchmark case in Washington state regarding the relocation of existing adult entertainment businesses.
"Somehow someone let the camel in the tent," the judge said. "Now they're asking the camel to exit the tent or at least relocate within the tent."
Dixon countered that even though the city didn't adopt the ordinance 10 years ago, it isn't precluded from doing so now because the Washington state case still applies.
McCullough also said that the new city laws didn't provide a means to "grandfather" or make exempt existing businesses, nor did it contain an amortization schedule to phase them out. Dixon argued otherwise.
City officials want to shut down LeMar's semi-nude dance room because they believe the activity will bring harmful secondary effects such as more crime and decreased property values.
Dixon offered no local evidence to that end, but said the city can rely on studies done in other communities.
McCullough plans to proffer an opinion from an expert witness to counter those studies. Adult entertainment, he said, is no longer confined to seedy parts of town and actually may spruce up areas.