The City Council finds:
(A) The operation of sexually oriented businesses in the city requires special regulations and supervision in order to protect, preserve and promote the health, safety, and welfare of the patrons of such businesses, as well as the health, safety, and welfare of the city's residents. Further, protecting order and morality, preventing the deterioration of the city's neighborhoods, promoting retail trade, maintaining property values, and ensuring sanitary and safe public places are desirable objectives of the community and the city's leaders.
(B) (1) Evidence from many different sources confirms that the operation of adult entertainment businesses has historically and regularly been accompanied by secondary effects that are detrimental to the health, safety, moral, economic vitality and growth of the city and its citizens. Such secondary effects include, but are not limited to, the following:
(a) Significant criminal activity and activities injurious to the health, safety, morals, economic growth and vitality, and general welfare of the community;
(b) Detrimental effects on nearby businesses and residential areas; and
(c) A decline in property values in the area of the adult entertainment businesses.
(2) Accordingly, there is a compelling need and interest to regulate adult entertainment businesses as provided in this chapter to protect and promote the public health, safety, morals, and general welfare of the city and its citizens.
(C) The city finds that this chapter bears a substantial relation to public health, safety and welfare, and promotes the long-term interests of the city community.
(D) Numerous studies and court opinions establish that adult entertainment businesses have objectionable operational characteristics and are frequently used for unlawful activities. The City Council recognizes that the courts have allowed cities to rely upon the experiences of other jurisdictions with regards to adult entertainment businesses and have not required each jurisdiction regulating such businesses to conduct their own studies. The City Council has decided to also rely upon such other experiences, as recognized by the courts, because it does not have the time, experience, and/or resources to adequately study these issues. As such, the City Council takes legislative notice of the evidence of conduct, activities, and crimes occurring in and around adult entertainment businesses located in other jurisdictions, which the City Council hereby deems to be relevant to the experience in the city, as reported in the studies and findings of other city and county legislative bodies that have also adopted ordinances regulating adult entertainment businesses.
(E) The resources available for responding to problems associated with adult entertainment businesses are limited and are most efficiently and effectively utilized through appropriate zoning and a licensing and regulatory program.
(F) Sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses are directly related to or associated with declines in property values, especially those of residential areas.
(G) Sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses are directly related to or associated with degradation of the quality of life within a neighborhood.
(H) Numerous other jurisdictions have attempted to address these adverse secondary effects by regulations which limit the zones in which sexually oriented adult entertainment uses are allowed and create buffers around such uses. The City Council relies on the validation of these methods by the United States Supreme Court, including, but not limited to, City of Kenton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc., et al., 475 U.S. 41, 106 S.Ct. 925 (1986), and Young v. American Mini Theatres, 426 U.S. 50 (1970).
(I) Sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses should only be located in areas of the city which are not in close proximity to residential uses, churches, parks, schools, childcare facilities, libraries, and similar facilities or uses.
(J) The City Council finds that protection of the public is best served by limiting adult entertainment related uses to a permittable special use in Light Industry (D-1) and Heavy Industry (D-2) zoning districts in the city.
(K) A reasonable time, place, and manner regulation of sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses will provide for the protection of the community and its property values, and protect the residents of the community from the adverse effects of such sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses, while providing those who desire to patronize sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses such an opportunity in areas within the city which are appropriate locations of sexually oriented adult entertainment businesses and land uses.
(L) The licensing fees required in this chapter are necessary as reasonable fees imposed to help defray the costs of processing the license applications and the substantial expenses incurred by the city in regulating the adult entertainment industry. License regulations set forth in this chapter are necessary to prevent the exploitation of minors, to assure the correct identification of persons working in adult entertainment businesses, to effectively deploy the city's limited law enforcement resources, and in order to effectively protect the health, safety, morals, and general welfare of the city and its citizens.
(M) The consumption of alcoholic beverages on the premises of sexually oriented businesses exacerbates the adverse secondary effects of such businesses on the community.
(N) Public studies, cases, and reports, as well as statistics and studies performed by a substantial number of cities and towns in the United States, indicate that:
(1) Large numbers of persons, primarily male, frequent such sexually oriented businesses, especially those which provide closed booths, cubicles, studios and rooms for the private viewing of so-called "adult" motion pictures, videotapes or live entertainment.
(2) Such closed booths, cubicles, studios and rooms have been used by patrons, clients or customers of such sexually oriented businesses for the purpose of engaging in specified sexual activities.
(3) Male and female prostitutes have been known to frequent such businesses in order to provide sex for hire to the patrons, clients or customers of such businesses within such booths, cubicles, studios and rooms.
(4) Doors, curtains, blinds and other closures installed in or on the entrances and exits of such booths, cubicles, studios and rooms which are closed while such booths, cubicles, studios and rooms are in use encourage patrons using such booths, cubicles, studios and rooms to engage in specified sexual activities therein with prostitutes, other persons or by themselves, thereby promoting and encouraging prostitution and the commission of specified sexual activities which cause blood, semen, urine or other bodily secretion to be deposited on the floors and walls of such booths, cubicles, studios and rooms, which deposits could prove detrimental to the health and safety of other persons who may come into contact with such deposits.
(5) Booths, cubicles, studios and rooms that are closed while they are in use often contain holes that have been cut or smashed out of the walls or other partitioning material. These holes permit the inhabitant of one booth, cubicle, studio or room to engage in specified sexual activities with the inhabitant of the adjoining booth, cubicle, studio or room. These holes promote and encourage specified sexual acts to occur between persons anonymously. Anonymous sexual contact poses a higher risk of spread of communicable diseases, including the AIDS virus, Hepatitis B and other sexually transmitted diseases. Further, the existence of such holes in booths, cubicles, studios and rooms at sexually oriented businesses provides an increased risk that blood, semen, urine or other bodily secretion will be deposited on the floors and walls of such booths, cubicles, studios and rooms, which deposits could prove detrimental to the health and safety of other persons who may come into contact with such deposits.
(6) Specified sexual activities often occur at unregulated sexually oriented businesses that provide live adult entertainment. Specified sexual activities include sexual physical contact between employees and patrons of sexually oriented businesses and specifically include "lap dancing" or manual or oral touching or fondling of specified anatomical areas, whether clothed or unclothed. Such casual sexual physical contact between strangers may result in the transmission of communicable diseases, which would be detrimental to the health of the patrons and employees of such sexually oriented businesses.
(7) The unregulated operation of sexually oriented businesses, including off-site adult businesses like adult bookstores, adult video stores and adult novelty stores, is associated with an increase in the incidence of sex-related crimes and other crimes and also has a disruptive effect on the surrounding neighborhood by causing excessive noise, parking problems, the presence of discarded sexually oriented material on residential lawns, and the performance of sexual acts in public places, as well as causing a deleterious effect on surrounding businesses and decrease in the value of surrounding property.
(8) Sexually oriented businesses that operate in close proximity to each other further contribute to an increase in crime, lower property values, blight and the downgrading of the quality of life and value of property in the adjacent area, and sexually oriented businesses that operate within a short distance of schools, churches, parks, libraries and other public facilities negatively impact such places and have an adverse effect upon persons, particularly children, walking to and from such places.
(9) The reasonable regulation and supervision of such sexually oriented businesses tends to discourage prostitution, other sex-related crimes, anonymous and high-risk sexual contact and unsanitary sexual activity, excessive noise and property devaluement, thereby decreasing the incidences of communicable diseases and sex-related crimes, all thereby promoting and protecting the health, safety and welfare of the employees and the members of the public who patronize such businesses and protecting the health, safety and property interests of a city and its residents.
(10) Location and zoning regulations alone do not adequately protect the public health, safety and welfare and thus certain requirements with respect to the ownership, employees, facility, operation, advertising, hours of business and other aspects of the sexually oriented business are in the public interest.
(O) It is the purpose and intent of the City Council, in enacting this chapter, to regulate sexually oriented businesses to promote the health, safety and general welfare of the city and its citizens and to establish reasonable and uniform regulations of such businesses in order to reduce or eliminate the adverse secondary effects of such sexually oriented businesses, protect residents from increased crime, preserve the quality of life, preserve the property values and the character of surrounding neighborhoods and businesses, deter the spread of blight, and protect against the threat to public health from the spread of communicable and social diseases.
(P) It is not the intent of the City Council, in enacting this chapter, to deny to any person rights to speech protected by the United States Constitution, or the State of Illinois Constitution. Further, by enacting this chapter, the City Council does not intend to deny the constitutionally protected rights of any adult to obtain or view any sexually oriented materials under the United States or State Constitutions, nor does it intend to deny any constitutionally protected rights that distributors or exhibitors of such sexually oriented materials may have to sell, distribute or exhibit such materials.
(Ord. 8183-2018, passed 4-2-2018)