Myrtle Beach- Horry County may take another shot at clamping down on adult-oriented businesses along thoroughfares such as U.S. 17 and 501, this time with a costly new business license system.
Nearly all county crackdown efforts over the past two decades have failed or remain tangled up in court, including police raids of several strip clubs last year after dancers were accused of illegally showing breasts.
The business license proposal is the most expensive but most effective enforcement option, county staff told the County Council's Infrastructure and Regulation Committee this month, and a full proposal is expected to come before that committee in February.
When it comes to strip clubs and pornography shops, Horry County's regulations just don't have the teeth to satisfy some council members, and that frustration has grown after years of fruitless court battles.
Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland and Councilman Howard Barnard are hoping that the costly license program will gain some traction in coming months.
The central problem of county enforcement is that by legal definition, there are no adult businesses in Horry County. Dancers at strip clubs are usually careful to cover breasts and porn shops balance merchandise, allowing the businesses to avoid falling into the adult category, which would mean more stringent regulation.
"They are conducting adult entertainment by anybody's standards," said Barnard, a staunch critic who has spearheaded an effort over the past year to rein in adult-oriented businesses.
Barnard said he will support a business license system that could give the county more regulatory power but, for now, existing rules are inadequate.
"If you go back and write a sexually oriented business license ordinance, it is not going to effect anybody because [by legal definition] we don't have any of those businesses in Horry County," he said.
The business license would require adult-oriented shops and clubs to pay the county a fee and submit to new rules, giving the county the option of pulling licenses of businesses that don't comply with its standards.
"You can demand that they have everything in sight of store personnel, meaning no more of those clandestine, scumbag back rooms," Gilland said.
County Planning Director Janet Carter said the license system could close V.I.P. strip club rooms where patrons get private dances but would require more police, inspectors and county time to enforce.
The county considered the license option a few years ago, she said, but decided it was too expensive.
"Truly, we do not receive very many complaints about adult entertainment. Occasionally we will get a citizen's complaint but not very often," Carter said.
Since 1987, various county attempts at reining in adult-oriented businesses have failed, Carter said.
"The vast majority of them just changed the way they did business," she said. "They challenged about everything we had."
In a typical scenario, the county will clamp down on the video shops by closely watching their merchandise - if porn shops have more than 50 percent adult merchandise they can be categorized as an adult business. Many strip clubs and porn shops are close enough to residential areas that they could not be operated as adult businesses under existing law.
The county has spent years in court fighting appeals from shop owners and eventually won, only to have porn shops just add more non-adult merchandise to its shelves.
Carter said the county just went through that scenario with Excitement Video Inc. on U.S. 501 and Seaboard Avenue.
"We did four years of litigation, and the result is [the owner said] 'We'll change. We put in more stock that is not adult,'" Carter said.
Zoning Director Roland Meyers said most of the businesses only come under the adult definition by accidentally having too much adult merchandise.
Horry County's most recent attempt to crackdown on strip clubs by using police raids to enforce zoning was dismissed by a county magistrate earlier this year and is now on appeal.
Robert V. Phillips, the Rock Hill attorney representing Thee Dollhouse, requested the 15th Circuit Court of Common Pleas dismiss the case against four dancers and the club manager.
Police raided the club in 2004 after allegations that the dancers exposed their breasts to undercover agents.
Phillips said the employees should never have been arrested by the police for a zoning violation, which typically requires the county to send a letter to the property owner and allows a non-criminal appeal process.
"We kept saying this is not criminal, this is civil," he said.
A decision on whether to dismiss the case could be made in January or February. If it is not dismissed, the case could be drawn out for years, according to County Attorney John Weaver.
Meanwhile, a draft business license proposal will be ready for council committee hearings in February and could move on to a County Council vote as early as the end of that month.
"We are not telling [staff] what the answer is. Staff is going to bring the answer to us," Barnard said. "I want it to be unbiased staff input on what we need to do to fix this."
