WORCESTER, Massachusetts— The Main Street bar owner suing the city for the right to turn his lounge into a strip club yesterday vowed to fight a proposed new adult entertainment law that would force any new strip clubs or adult video stores into three areas on the outskirts of downtown.

The would-be strip club owner and his lawyers blasted the city administration for what they characterized as a bumbling attempt to block nude dancing on Main Street, and said the proposed law would instead open up more residential areas to adult businesses.

Two of the proposed adult entertainment zones downtown abut partially residential neighborhoods along Irving Street and in Lincoln Square.

In his first public comments since his legal battle with the city began late last year, Seven Lounge owner Brendan Robichaud yesterday described his vision for an “upscale gentleman’s club” catering to businessmen and couples at his 287 Main St. location.

“We’re in an area where there’s other bars. There’s no schools, churches, day cares. There’s none of that, versus what the city’s proposing. They want to put us in residential areas. They want to put us in areas where we would have an impact,” Mr. Robichaud said in an interview at the Seven Lounge.

A 1991 city ordinance created a downtown adult entertainment district, but added so many buffer zones around other kinds of businesses and public buildings that, in effect, the entire district is off-limits to new strip clubs and adult video stores, lawyers for Mr. Robichaud argue. Existing adult entertainment businesses were grandfathered into the original law.

In January, City Solicitor David M. Moore conceded in a letter to City Manager Michael V. O’Brien that the current ordinance is likely to be struck down as unconstitutional. Such a ruling would not only open the door for Mr. Robichaud’s plan, but also seriously undermine the city’s power to regulate any proposed adult entertainment business.

On the eve of a scheduled Worcester Superior Court hearing last month on Mr. Robichaud’s request for an injunction preventing the city from enforcing the current law, the city administration proposed an eleventh-hour overhaul of the regulation to carve out three spots within the adult entertainment district where new adult entertainment businesses could be opened.

The Planning Board is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposed changes at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Worcester Public Library in Salem Square.

“I’ve been doing this for 37 years, and I have never seen an ordinance created in such panic in the way it came out as with this particular amendment. Who are they kidding? This was aimed at Brendan. This wasn’t aimed for the betterment of the city of Worcester,” said Daniel A. Silver, a Connecticut-based lawyer representing Mr. Robichaud.

Mr. O’Brien, the city manager, said through a spokesperson yesterday that his administration respects the opinion of Mr. Robichaud and his lawyers, but that the city intends to use its legal authority to protect public safety here.

“We will hear public testimony next Wednesday at the Planning Board’s public hearing. It is our job to protect the safety of our community from land uses with negative secondary effects.

“The law provides for this and we shall apply the law as appropriate to maintain public safety in our city.”

By limiting exclusionary zones within the district to 500 feet around other adult entertainment businesses, bars and the city library, the proposed amendment would allow adult businesses in three areas:

• A triangle extending from Lincoln Square east and north to Interstate 290.

• A narrow strip east of Irving and Linden streets from Chandler Street north to Bowdoin Street.

• A tract around the former Worcester Common Fashion Outlets mall extending to both sides of Summer Street near St. Vincent Hospital.

The Seven Lounge would still be excluded from having nude dancers under the amended law because it is well within the 500-foot buffer zone around at least one other bar.

City officials, including Police Chief Gary J. Gemme, have argued that allowing strip clubs and adult video stores to be concentrated in one area or to be located near bars leads to criminal activity.

But Mr. Robichaud said he has a track record of operating his lounge responsibly, and that wouldn’t change if the entertainment inside changed from DJs playing dance music to nude dancers. He bought the bar four years ago and poured more than $150,000 into fixing it up.

“We did that to cater to a cleaner, older, better-behaved crowd,” Mr. Robichaud said.

Mr. Silver and a local lawyer, David E. Silverman, who also represents Mr. Robichaud, yesterday criticized the city’s effort to amend the adult entertainment law as a “knee-jerk reaction” intended to block their client’s plans.

“The gentlemen’s club which he wishes to get started with is what he calls, and what I call, an upscale facility,” Mr. Silver said. “Within the industry an upscale club caters to professionals and couples.”

If the city administration holds that such a club would be harmful, he added, it doesn’t make sense that the city would push to move the proposed club off Main Street into areas closer to homes.

“I think residents of the city of Worcester have a right to know what the city of Worcester has done in its panic with little forethought or anything else,” Mr. Silver said.

“What they are doing is transferring their problem — if they think there is a problem, and there isn’t — but they’re transferring this out into areas where people are going to be more concerned.”

Mr. Robichaud called the city’s resistance political posturing.

“We know we’re up against everybody,” Mr. Robichaud said. “But it’s not that they don’t visit an establishment like this. They just don’t want to be seen as supporting it.”