DANIA BEACH – from sun-sentinel.com – It’s the peep show that won’t go away, the X-rated emporium that refuses to budge.
Your A to X Video Outlet, this city’s last adult entertainment business, remains defiantly open despite a 2001 ordinance that requires it to pack up and leave its Stirling Road home.
The video store/peep show now is asking a Broward judge to declare the Dania Beach zoning law regulating where adult entertainment businesses can and can’t operate as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
That local law leaves almost nowhere in the city for the video shop to go, other than an industrial area near a rock pit, says one of the attorneys representing Your A to X Video Outlet.
Dania Beach’s leaders intentionally created a “zone-out” to discourage certain kinds of commerce, argues Jamie Benjamin, the lawyer. Those citizens who seek “constitutionally-protected material that happens to be adult in nature” shouldn’t have to leave town to find it, he says.
The city is fining the video store $450 a day for continuing to operate. Dania Beach’s mayor wants it to go somewhere less in-your-face than its present storefront on a major east-west artery near Interstate-95.
“The city is trying to evolve,” said Mayor Anne Castro. “We’re trying to present a more family-friendly, tourism-driven environment — a nicer place to work, play and live.”
In addition to its Broward Circuit Court case, Your A to X Video Outlet is warding off attempts by its landlord — Stirling Center LLP — to kick it out. Stirling Center LLP has filed eviction papers arguing that the shop can no longer operate legally on its present premises.
Eight years ago, the city commission passed an ordinance restricting adult businesses to areas zoned for “Industrial Research Office Marine” — the type of areas where you find warehouses and furniture makers. A few pockets of Dania Beach carry such a zoning designation, most of them west of I-95, and none on major roads.
Existing adult entertainment establishments were given three years to comply with the new law. But by the 2004 deadline, four hadn’t moved. The city waited another two years, then began enforcing the ordinance.
Since then, three of the businesses have shut. Your A to X Video Outlet now stands alone.
“I guess they feel: location, location, location,'” said the mayor. “I think their clientele would find them anywhere.”
Business records list the president of Your A to X Video Outlet as Steven Sievers. Benjamin said Sievers will not comment on the litigation.
The front of the business at 1921 Stirling Road is filled with adult movies, pornographic magazines and sex toys. But that didn’t seem to be the attraction one recent afternoon when there were a dozen cars parked outside, but no one browsing the aisles of videos with such titles as “Saddlesluts” and “Spring Chicken 22.” The patrons had apparently paid $8 to be buzzed into the back room.
That’s where there are about a dozen peep show booths as well as a large-screen television looping adult movies, Dania Beach’s chief code enforcement officer told a January 2007 code violation hearing.
Nicholas Lupo, the code enforcement officer, said he was sexually propositioned by a man in the back room and saw two others performing a sex act.
Benjamin said sexual activity is prohibited on the premises.
Your A to X Video Outlet is staying put for at least the next five months. That’s when Broward County Judge Leonard Feiner will rule whether it can be evicted for allegedly doing construction work not approved by the city.
Until that hearing, Feiner has ordered the store to make deposits into an escrow account to cover the $450 fine levied for each day it operates in violation of city code.
Benjamin, a veteran of challenging South Florida municipal ordinances that restrict adult entertainment, said Your A to X Video Outlet isn’t going to back down or go away.
“If there is only one left, why are they relocating it?” he asked.