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White Rock ‘adult-entertainment’ rules questioned

City defends new bylaws, saying leaders agree with residents’ concerns over potential ‘strip joints’
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White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin says the city has no intention of allowing strip clubs or exotic dance venues, and that having new regulatory bylaws in place ensures that such applications can be discouraged. (File photo)

White Rock council Monday evening unanimously passed bylaws regulating adult-entertainment venues in the city – while repeatedly assuring concerned residents who attended a public hearing on the measures earlier in the evening that it has no intention of allowing such businesses.

Prior to the decision, about 50 people attended the hearing to show their concerns with the city’s plan.

Planning and development services director Carl Johannsen made it clear prior to the hearing that what the city means by adult entertainment, in the amendments to the zoning and business licence bylaws, is “exotic dancing” or strippers, and that there are no applications for such venues pending.

While the amendments spell out definitions for permitted town centre uses, they effectively preclude applications for such venues coming forward by limiting the allowable locations to a few sites in the Central Plaza and Royal Place area, limiting hours and visibility of such businesses, and specifying that such venues cannot serve liquor.

And, as Johannsen pointed out, the owners of these properties would have to approve leasing them to such businesses before any application could emerge.

Coun. Helen Fathers questioned the city’s oblique approach to the issue, which was prompted by an attempt to organize a ‘ladies night’ featuring male strippers in a waterfront venue last year.

“Why can’t we just say no strip joints?” she asked. “Why can’t we just say that?”

Johannsen explained that while council could decide to prohibit strip clubs entirely, ‘exotic dancing’ is a legal land use in Canada, and that without bylaws in place, the city could be subject to legal challenges, establishing a precedent which would leave it with no control at all over such venues in city limits.

Responding to other questions from Fathers, Johannsen said the bylaws are not intended to cover limited performance plays or other presentations at existing venues – such as the Coast Capital Playhouse –which could be interpreted as ‘adult entertainment,’ but rather venues providing exotic dancing “over a long period of time.”

Before the hearing, Mayor Wayne Baldwin told attendees who had come to express their opposition to such business, “this is not an attempt on the part of council to turn White Rock into a den of iniquity… (It’s an attempt) to get a grip on the issue and not let it slip by.”

Residents, many of them from the Sussex House development adjacent to Central Plaza, said they feared the consequences of even contemplating adult entertainment as a permitted land use in the city, noting that an alleged ‘massage parlour’ on Foster Street – since shut down – had attracted undesirable pedestrian traffic to the neighbourhood.

“Why are we even here?” asked Sussex House resident Denise Thompson.

“Can’t we just say ‘no’? We don’t want to have it here.”

Sussex House strata council president Randy Hunt said the demographics of the area do not call for adult-entertainment venues.

“If you open that door, there is going to be a challenge from liquor establishments, there is going to be organized crime and drug trafficking, and we don’t want that.”

After each resident spoke, Baldwin reiterated council’s agreement with their concerns.

“I don’t know how we could be more clear,” he said.

“Our intention is not to have this.”