Rapid City, SD- Dan Turner, owner of the Rapid City [South Dakota] Gentlemen’s Club can identify with the story posted lasy week on adultfyi.com about the strip club that wants to locate next to a homeless shelter
Turner’s club, it seems, occupies the same building as a church, but is closed at present due to a city ordinance. Turner, however, is looking to reopen the first of the year. Turner thinks his is a unique situation and doubts whether anyone else in the country can lay to similar claim. “We’re in the same building as a church,” said Turner. “We opened January of 2002. Then we closed for a time being. Now we’re looking at reopening.”
Asked if he got much flak when he first opened the club, Turner said it wasn’t a well known church group and the portion that became a strip club was a former Day’s Inn. “We have monthly and weekly units and out of the old restaurant and bar, we made the club. Then we took the banquet hall and leased it to the church.” When Turner first opened, the local media was very much on top of the story. “But we co-existed pretty well,” said Turner. “None of our customers bothered them [the church]; and none of their people bothered us.” Turner would get a kick out of introducing the club’s dancers to the surrounding environs. “They couldn’t believe that our door into a hallway into another door would be a church.” Turner said he subsequently went through some legal wrangling with the city. “It was really a bad ordinance and now it comes down to a topless situation.”
Turner said his club was the only one in Rapid City that was fully nude and had full alcohol. “Now we can have full alcohol but they can only be topless. Originally they wanted the girls ten feet away and it was horrible. We fought them a couple of different times. Then it went to a public vote. The ordinance went into effect April of 2003 and we closed soon after because business really went down hill. But I figured there’d be a time where people would get used to the fact that this is all we’re going to have. They might as well get used to it. I figured if we stayed out of it long enough, we wouldn’t go through hard times. We got to the point where we’re going ahead and reopen.”