Louisville, KY- A controversial adult bookstore on Fern Valley Road has closed and its building has been razed, but another store with a similar name and the same phone number has opened a few blocks away.

Pure Pleasure Mega Center, at 3299 Fern Valley Road, had peep shows and sold a variety of adult items including movies. The new store, called Purely Pleasure Boutique, recently opened at 3103 Fern Valley Road. It sells adult novelties, lingerie and movies.

Pure Pleasure Mega Center was one of three adult bookstores that opened in late 2002 or early 2003 and drew protests from pornography opponents and lawsuits from Jefferson County Attorney Irv Maze.

The lawsuit against Pure Pleasure claimed that the store could not operate in its location because it was zoned EZ-1, a classification that prohibits adult businesses.

“As far as we’re concerned the legal issue that Pure Pleasure was involved in has been resolved by them moving out the EZ-1,” Maze spokesman Bill Patteson said.

But the new boutique is also in the EZ-1 zone. The owners, Fern Valley Boutique LLC, have been cited by Metro Inspections, Permits & Licenses for violating zoning regulations, said Bill Schreck, director of IPL.

Frank Mascagni, a lawyer who represents the store’s owners, said he will argue before the Board of Zoning Adjustment on Monday that Purely Pleasure Boutique is not an adult business and, therefore, should be allowed to operate where it is.

He said the boutique is not an adult business because the majority of what is sold is not adult in nature.

“It’s a completely different business,” Mascagni said. “It’s not an adult bookstore; it’s a boutique.”

Pure Pleasure was one of three adult bookstores that had been battling with city regulators and lawyers since 2003. The other stores are Cam I at 8209 Preston Highway and Blue Sky Video at 12909 Dixie Highway.

Schreck said the Preston and Dixie stores are in violation of zoning rules because they are too close to a church, a school or a neighborhood. A Jefferson Circuit Court judge ruled that the stores were in violation of the zoning regulations, but the stores have since filed an appeal with the state Court of Appeals, Patteson said.

The old Pure Pleasure property was razed by Eddie Preslar, (cq) owner of the Grizzly Creek Outfitters, which was next door. He bought the bookstore earlier this month, tore it down and will eventually build Preslar’s Western Shop in its place.

He said the bookstore “took business down” at his shop, but he doesn’t feel that the closing the store is a victory for the area because Purely Pleasure Boutique has opened.

“They just got pushed down to some other neighborhood,” Preslar said.

Patteson said even though the stores on Preston and Dixie are involved in litigation, their doors are allowed to remain open. That does not, however, mean they have free range to violate laws, he said.

“Additional violations will be dealt with by new charges,” Patteson said.

But that doesn’t sound like much of a deterrent, said Barbara Davis, a former Jefferson County Commissioner who worked with other community leaders to protest adult bookstores.

“If they bust them in one area, they just move somewhere else,” Davis said.