Ft. Lauderdale, Fl- Excited about the redevelopment of their once-downtrodden Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, Victoria Park residents are suddenly aghast over the new neighbor who appears to be moving in down the street.

Larry Flynt.

The Hustler magazine publisher, the infamous prince of raunchy, explicit pornography, wants to open a shop to peddle lingerie, toys and DVDs in the store formerly occupied by Peaches Records at 1500 E. Sunrise Blvd.

The sex shop’s neighbors include newly built town houses selling for $500,000, a strip shopping center, a soon-to-be-built Publix supermarket and, next door to the building in question, The Herald’s Fort Lauderdale bureau, on the second floor of the Keyes real-estate office.

“It’s unfair. We’re very upset,” said Jan Idelman, president of Victoria Park Civic Association. “We’ll prevent this through all legal means possible.” But it is uncertain whether there is a legal way to prevent Hustler from opening the store.

According to a city ordinance, businesses within 500 feet of a residential area, such as the former Peaches, can be closed if 51 percent or more of their sales are pornographic.

Vice Mayor Carlton Moore said the ordinance has rarely been enforced, noting that several X-rated businesses operate near residential areas and churches.

“We’d have to audit every business like that, and that would be unprecedented,” he said. “I don’t know of us ever doing that.” Although Flynt’s attorney, Paul Cambria, would not confirm the project was underway, he said he was well aware of that ordinance.

“We always operate within the parameters of the law,” he said.

Even if the city ordinance were enforced, it is not clear that the shop could be targeted. Flynt’s sex-rated empire has spawned a series of successful coffee shop/porn emporiums around the country where the price of a cappuccino is almost as obscene as the racks of bondage merchandise. If he sells more java than Jenna Jameson videos, the ordinance might not apply.

Flynt is also fighting Kentucky officials over his effort to run a similar shop in Lexington.

Officials in Greensboro, N.C., struggled in court for years to shut a peep show that, to get around an ordinance, also offered nonpornographic fare.

The business was represented by one of Flynt’s Cincinnati-based attorneys.

City Commissioner Dean Trantalis, whose constituents live in Victoria Park, said he does not want Hustler moving into the neighborhood. But he, too, is a troubled by the language of the ordinance.

“Forty-nine percent? So you can sell anything up to that amount?

How do you measure that?” he said. “I mean, what’s the point if you can still sell porn?” Trantalis vowed to push the commission to change the law so it does not require an audit of sales receipts to close a business.

Mayor Jim Naugle has decided to wait and see. About a decade ago, a topless doughnut shop and an X-rated car wash opened, sending Fort Lauderdale residents into a tizzy.

“And the places failed miserably to attract anyone,” he said.

“Often times these places don’t have the business we all expect they’ll have. So I would say we should relax and wait.”