HUDSON, NY-City Code Enforcement Officer Peter Wurster issued a stop-work order this month halting construction at a business called the Lone Wolf strip club in the previously unoccupied Foster Refrigerator building on North Second Street.

Mr. Wurster said the principals involved in the project had not applied for a building permit. Application for a building permit triggers a review by the Hudson Planning Commission. Also, the project may have to deal with Section 188-4 of the Hudson City Code, headed “Nudity and lewd or indecent acts prohibited.” The section reads: “No person shall, within the limits of the City and in public view, appear in a state of nudity or make any indecent exposure of his or her person or commit or do any lewd or indecent act or behave in a lewd or indecent manner.” Mr. Wurster said that “Jim Dinardi, who owns the building, called a month ago and asked me some questions about renting part of the building out to an individual who wanted to use it for storage. He was proposing a non-load-bearing wall-a partition to create the storage space-and he didn’t need a building permit for that.” In early August the code enforcement officer met with one of the principals in the business proposing to lease the building. At that time, the principal gave him no information that changed Mr Wurster’s impression that the building was being leased for storage. Mr. Wurster did not identify the person with whom he met. The case might have ended there except that Mr. Wurster began to hear reports about a strip club in that location. “I thought it was a joke at first,” he said. “But I heard more and more rumors from an increasing number of people and decided I’d better go down there and take a look. “When I arrived Tuesday, there was a bar and a pool table in place, a pole for dancers and a little booth. It was clearly a place of public assembly,” said Mr. Wurster. “A place of public assembly within an industrial building also creates a situation with two separate occupancies.” He said a place of public assembly has a stringent set of requirements that include review by the city Planning Commission and by the state. Mr. Dinardi, who was at the building Wednesday, said that there is “a whole other side to the story,” but he did not elaborate. He declined to respond when asked how many jobs the proposed business would bring to Hudson.