Zone change puts squeeze on proposed topless club

Adrienne Packer

Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999 | 11:15 a.m.

Sporting House owners were stripped of their right to convert the fitness center into a huge cabaret after they failed to secure the proper permits before a county ordinance passed Wednesday.

The Clark County Commission, acting as the zoning board, unanimously agreed to extend the distance requirements between adult-oriented businesses from 500 feet to 1,000 feet.

Owners of the upscale Industrial Drive gym obtained a use permit for their topless club but failed to get a business license before Tuesday's midnight deadline.

"The Sporting House was under the impression they were grandfathered in but they are not," said Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone. "They have one of the two requirements -- you have to have both."

Unless the Sporting House takes the county to court, it cannot be converted into an adult club because it sits within 1,000 feet of an adult-oriented bookstore, Malone said.

While Sporting House representatives have said the business is 1,062 feet from the bookstore, Malone said that measurement is from door to door. The new ordinance requires the distance to be measured from property line to property line.

Sporting House attorney John O'Reilly could not be reached for comment Wednesday or this morning.

Deputy District Attorney Rob Warhola briefly debated with lawyers whether a grandfather clause should be included in the ordinance, but the board decided against it since such a clause is built into all county laws.

"There is no reason to be redundant in it. They feel comfortable and confident with that already in existence," Malone said.

Malone introduced the ordinance after he noticed a cluster of adult-oriented businesses on Industrial Drive, just a block west of the Las Vegas Strip. He said he was concerned that entrepreneurs were approaching the county for use permits when they were denied by the city of Las Vegas, which has the 1,000-foot distance restriction.

The county ordinance was backed by Metro Police statistics, which showed calls decreased by 22 percent in areas where the distance between adult clubs had been increased to 1,000 feet. The calls increased by 81 percent in neighborhoods where cabarets and bookstores opened within 500 feet of each other, according to Metro reports.