Adult entertainment facilities, as defined in this section, shall be regulated to promote the health, safety, and general welfare of the citizens of the City. In addition to the general purpose of the Zoning Code, these regulations shall prevent any location of such facility from having a harmful effect, and shall seek to discourage a concentration of adult businesses within the City, thereby reducing or eliminating the adverse secondary effects from such businesses. The provisions of this section have neither the purpose nor the effect of imposing a limitation or restriction on the content of any communicative materials including sexually oriented materials. Similarly, it is not the intent or the effect of this section to restrict or deny access by adults to sexually oriented materials protected by the First Amendment, or to deny access by the distributors and exhibitors of sexually oriented entertainment to their intended market. Neither is it the intent nor effect of this section to condone or legitimize the distribution of obscene material. Rather, the intent of this section is an exercise of traditional zoning authority for the purposes set forth in West Virginia Code Section 8-24-1 and Section 8-24-39. The provisions of this zoning classification are not intended to supersede the provisions of any other ordinance of the City of Wellsburg or law of the State of West Virginia. The provisions of this zoning ordinance are in addition to any other law or regulation.
(a) Adult Entertainment Facility Defined. Under the terms of this Zoning Ordinance, such facility is defined as follows: nightclub, bar, restaurant, supper club, lounge, live or movie theater, cabaret, bookstore, or other establishment in which a person or persons appear in a state of nudity in the performance of their duties or material is available depicting person or persons in a state of nudity. Nudity shall mean the showing of the human genitals less than completely and opaquely covered, the pubic region, the buttocks, the female breast below a point immediately above the top of the areola, or the human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state, even if completely and opaquely covered. Such facilities, to the average person and applying contemporary community standards, appeal to prurient interest; may include patently offense representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, of masturbation, excretory functions, and lewd exhibitions of the genitals; taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
(b) Location. No person, partnership, corporation or other business organization shall operate an adult entertainment facility, and no person shall appear in a state of nudity in an adult entertainment facility, in other than an M-1 (Industrial) Zone. Such facility must be located further than three hundred (300) feet from a residential zone or a zone that allows residential uses, a religious use, a public or private school or college, a government building open to the public, a public park or public recreational area, or other adult business. For the purpose of this section, distance shall be measured in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures or objects, from the nearest portion of the parcel of real estate upon which an adult business is located to the nearest property line of the premises of a religious use, a public or private school or college, a government building open to the public, or a public park or public recreational area, or to the nearest boundary line of a residential zone.
(c) Signs. No adult entertainment facility shall be permitted to advertise by sign or other public display.
(d) Windows. Each adult entertainment facility shall be required to cover its windows, building openings, and entries.
(e) Noise. All external video and auditory impacts shall be prohibited. This shall include at minimum a prohibition on outdoor screens and loudspeakers.
(Ord. 02-05. Passed 4-9-02.)