Effort to regulate adult businesses divides Hastings

Hastings has no adult entertainment in sight, and some residents want to make sure it stays that way.

One of them is Kristi Nelson, who co-owns an automobile repair shop in the city's industrial park -- proposed recently as a new zoning location for such businesses. The industrial park, she said, has a dance studio for kids and a skate park and municipal ice arena nearby.

"This is a mecca for children," Nelson said.

She was one of dozens of Hastings residents who protested adult entertainment at a City Council meeting held to update a city ordinance regulating such businesses. Nelson and other opponents were surprised to hear that city leaders wouldn't endorse an outright ban.

"We want to be able to regulate them as best we can," said Mayor Paul Hicks. "Some people say if you want to regulate it, you must be for it. I think that's a real errant judgment by some folks."

Regulation of adult entertainment -- strip clubs, bookstores and theaters -- can present significant challenges for cities because of First Amendment protections for speech and expression. Outright bans in Hastings or any other city would lead to legal challenges because of several court decisions embracing free speech, said Tom Grundhoefer, general counsel for the League of Minnesota Cities.

He suggests that before adult entertainment comes knocking, cities have ordinances in place to regulate it through zoning or other approaches.

Following Lakeville's lead

Lakeville, another Dakota County city, did just that a year ago when it decided to keep its adult entertainment ordinance instead of relying on the state law -- a choice the state law allows. The Lakeville ordinance specifies 12 types of sexually oriented businesses, such as adult arcades, cabarets, massage parlors, saunas, theaters and escort agencies. The city states in its ordinance that it doesn't want "to restrict or deny access by adults to sexually oriented materials protected by the First Amendment," but also warns that "experience from other cities" shows that preventing prostitution, illicit sex and violent crimes depends on close inspection.

Lakeville, a city of about 54,000 residents, has no adult entertainment businesses and no applications for one, said Steve Mielke, city administrator.

Grundhoefer said that discussion over adult entertainment "ebbs and flows" in Minnesota cities and that Hastings is the latest battleground.

The Hastings City Council placed a one-year moratorium on "adult uses" to study how the ordinance should be written. The city's current ordinance allows adult entertainment by special permit in a portion of the city that's now seen significant commercial development.

Doubts about state law

While a 2-year-old state law regulates strip clubs, the League of Minnesota Cities warns of serious doubts about the law's constitutionality. In addition, the law doesn't provide for adult businesses other than strip clubs.

"It's a very confusing law," Grundhoefer said. "We've been taking the view that if cities are concerned about this subject matter they should do something at the local level and not necessarily rely on the state statute."

City Attorney Dan Fluegel said a recent legal challenge to the state law in Duluth and Minneapolis shows why Hastings shouldn't rely on a law he thinks is unconstitutional.

Nelson, the auto shop owner, said that 44 of the 48 business owners in the industrial park signed a petition opposing any city ordinance changes that would zone the area for adult entertainment. Strip clubs, she said, "would bring a whole different element of people" to Hastings, and she said the state law would stop that from happening. "Right now you fry the big fish and then you go after the tadpoles later, which is the [adult] bookstores," she said.

Hicks said he thinks the City Council will enact a new ordinance by the end of the summer after more public hearings. Zoning for adult entertainment, he said, presents challenges even if the city found a "good area" for such activity.

"No matter where you put it, people would oppose it," he said.