Metro, Tennessee- Eight years after the city tried to crack down on adult businesses with rules including a ban on lap dances, Metro is putting action behind its controversial law.

Some say the years of court delays have made the rules obsolete – and expensive for the taxpayers – even as the regulations are getting off the ground.

One of the cornerstones of the new regulations is a “3-foot” rule, requiring dancers to keep at least 3-feet distance from patrons. And while the average lap dance today runs about $30, Metro’s bill for ending the lap dance runs into the six figures: A $500,000-plus award of attorney fees to strip club owners and dancers, as well about $100,000 per year to fund the city’s new bureaucracy to enforce the rules.

Meanwhile, during the years while the ordinance’s constitutionality was tied up in the appeals courts, at least 30 of the adult businesses that were the focus of the ban were shut down through a series of highly publicized prostitution busts.

Politicians who oppose the rules said they’re a good example of government waste – an attempt to regulate an industry that has already been cleaned up by the Metro crackdowns.

“We very easily have spent half a million dollars in trying to regulate something. I see it as a total waste of time and almost a total waste of energy,” said former Metro Councilman Roy Dale, speaking of the $536,535 in attorney fees that a judge says Metro owes to the coalition of adult businesses and dancers who challenged the regulations in court. (Metro is challenging the award.)

Backers of the proposal say even though the sex business in Nashville has been tidied up, the law will ensure that prostitution and other illegal elements do not return.

“The most troubling establishments have been closed down at this point,” said Chris Ferrell, who argued for the new regulations when he was a Metro councilman. “I think today, the purpose is a little different. It’s more preventative than corrective.”

Metro has already begun moving to enforce the ordinance. So the lap dance – and its even racier cousin, the “bed dance” – may be available now, but it’s not clear for how much longer.

The city mailed out notices last week to adult-business owners, giving them 60 days to disclose past criminal convictions, register their contact information with Metro, and sign an oath of understanding that prostitution is illegal.

Meanwhile, the regulatory board that will have subpoena power and decide yea or nay on licenses for dancers and club operators has begun meeting. Today it will get together again to continue working on hiring the new compliance inspector.

The new regulations call for background checks on those working in adult entertainment, set out requirements for viewing booths and curb business opening hours – with the heaviest restrictions on Sundays.

The annual bill to the taxpayers, which Metro budget estimates say will be $100,000, will include:

• At least $55,400 in salary and benefits for the inspector, who will be in charge of day-to-day clerical work and background checks for those in the business.

• An estimated 400-plus background checks for performers, at $56 each.

• $2,600 in court reporter’s fees for taking notes at the licensing board’s meetings

The city won’t break even, with industry fees projected at topping out just under $60,000 annually. The first year, it won’t even be that much – because businesses and dancers will be charged more to renew their licenses and permits than to get them to begin with.

“It’s not going to pay for itself,” said Linda Borum, the Metro Codes Department official who will work closely with the compliance inspector.

But making money isn’t why some people say they favor the new regulation.

Ann Deol is one of them. The Second Avenue resident says her prayers were answered this time last year, when authorities showed up at the distinct pastel-pink-and-lavender building not far from her home – Babes Adult Entertainment at 300 McCann St., near the interstate – and padlocked it.

“I sorta say a prayer” when driving past, Deol said. Only “now it’s a prayer of thanksgiving when I see Babes locked up. I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

Babes was one of about 30 massage parlors, saunas and other businesses accused of fronting for prostitution that the Metro Law Department has filed court papers against in the past 2½ years. The club shut down about six months after it opened.

In their efforts to shutter clubs where sex was being sold, investigators hit businesses with every possible codes, fire or police citation, Metro vice officer Sgt. Rob Forrest said, from improper exit doors to women living on the premises without the right zoning from the city.

Deol said hers is a moral argument, even if the city’s isn’t.

“I don’t think we need any more of that sort of thing, because I think that we need to have a little more moral responsibility,” she said. An option better than more government regulation would be if customers would “stop needing this sort of amusement and entertainment. There must be other kinds, better ways, to spend their time.”

Adult entertainment patron Patrick Noles disagreed.

“If it’s two consenting adults, what’s the … problem?” he said. Later he added, “I don’t know why this city has to have a church as a conscience.”

Noles, who said he is a customer at Ken’s Gold Club and Christie’s Cabaret, said he finds the regulations unnecessary, especially since a law already on the books dictates a special zoning district – the adult entertainment overlay – in the inner core of the city for strip clubs and other adult business.

“If they’re in central areas of town, then fine, leave them alone,” he said.

Under the new rules, the city inspector will make a maximum of four visits to each adult business per year, and more if the office receives a complaint. The new, five-member licensing board that oversees the inspector will meet every two weeks and can subpoena witnesses in investigations and issue civil citations.

Jay Young, manager at Noshville delicatessen on Broadway, said he worries that adult entertainment, even confined to downtown, can discourage new real estate development. “No one wants that in their back yard,” said Young, even as he acknowledged that strip clubs pay rent and taxes just like New York-style delis. But “you don’t really start getting disgruntled about it until you see it within an eye’s shot of your business.”

Adult business operators worry that the new law will eat into their profits or that it could be used to force them out of business, though some in the industry are already talking about whether there are creative ways to stay within the law and meet their profit goals.

The law curbs their hours back to 3 a.m., eliminating the prime pre-dawn hours for strip clubs and the business that floods in after the bars close. Currently, many are open until 5 a.m.

A standard lap dance costs around $30, with the house taking a percentage, and the dancers keeping the remainder, as well as tips.

But the overall dollar-figure impact of the new rules on businesses and entertainers is hard to determine. Industry workers contacted by The Tennessean were reluctant to speak publicly. Some are involved in continuing litigation with the city.

“The fear among those in the business is that the licensing ordinance is going to be used as a pretext to put them out of business,” said Nashville lawyer John Herbison, who represents some of the city’s adult businesses. “If a license is required to engage in a particular business, and that license is denied, or if the license is initially issued and then revoked or non-renewed, that’s a pretty effective way to effect censorship.”

Herbison represents Metro News Video Bookstore on Fifth Avenue South on a continuing basis, as well as other businesses for specific legal matters, he said. Metro News is the store that bills itself as the “world’s largest,” and Herbison said its stock now removes it from regulation under the ordinance.

“Only part of one floor of the building now has sexual materials,” Herbison said, and the ordinance requires a majority of the stock to be adult in nature in order to qualify under the regulations.

Another attorney, Brad Schafer, said businesses are bracing for the impact – even though compliance is still an open question.

“We believe there are certain provisions of that ordinance that will significantly and detrimentally affect the businesses,” said Schafer, whose Michigan law firm represents Ken’s Gold Club and others. “Now, whether they decide to comply with those provisions or change the form of entertainment so that they wouldn’t fall within the ordinance, that’s going to be something up to the clients.”

Both lawyers said the new policies would not have prevented the slayings of two 18-year-old women in 1996 at the Exotic Tan Club on Church Street. Supporters of the new regulations pointed to those stabbing deaths as reasons why the industry needs more scrutiny. Relatives of the two women could not be reached for comment.

“Nothing they could have done, and no restriction that the municipality could impose, or could have imposed, would have stopped that from occurring,” Schafer said. “I wish we lived in a perfect world where there was no crime, but we are not in such a utopia.”

The current council’s de facto defender of the entertainment industry, Adam Dread, said he’s not sure the new law is needed, especially given recent police sweeps that shut the establishments that were promoting prostitution. The ones left are running “above-board,” pay taxes to the city and help draw in tourists and conventions, he said.

“I hope we don’t overpolice it, running into the potential of making the customers nervous and uncomfortable,” said Dread, who as an at large councilman represents the entire city. “That could hurt their businesses, and not that they’re doing anything illegal, but they don’t want people to know they’re there.”

Dread said a better option would be changing the state and Metro laws that keep liquor and beer, respectively, out of strip clubs. Then the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission and the Metro Beer Board could be charged with regulating the clubs as they regulate liquor-by-the-drink licenses and beer permits.

It wouldn’t be a problem for ABC to tack on dance/strip clubs to its list of responsibilities, said the ABC’s chief law enforcement officer, Mark Hutchens – though it would be challenging in rural areas, where staffing is spread thin.

Ferrell, who was seen as a liberal leader on the council, said his intent was not to close adult businesses operating within the law. Ferrell left office in 2003 and is now publisher of Nashville Scene.

“At the time, this was a legitimate problem. People are always trying to figure out the motivations, and mine was never a moralistic crusade. It really was always about having appropriate regulations for law enforcement to ensure the safety and well-being of people in Nashville.”

Dean, the top Metro attorney, echoed Ferrell’s sentiments. Jim Murphy, not Dean, was law director in the late ’90s when the Metro Council approved the new regulations, though Dean has been Metro’s attorney for the most recent chapters of the legal fight with the industry.

“The goal there is not to close businesses,” Dean said.

“The goal is just to say that there be certain regulations, certain standards set, and our job as the Law Department is to defend the ordinances that the council passes and to put this into effect.” He added, “It’s been a long haul.” •