2005/06/15 Council Agenda Packet

of recent newspaper articles. DCP's survey of newspaper articles about the proliferation of adult entertainment establishments shows widespread public concern about their impacts, such as increased crime, attracting disreputable outsiders to a residential area, changing neighbor- hood character, and outrage and fear. For example, a businessman on Sixth Avenue in Chelsea who has just had a triple -X video store move into the ground floor space in his office building stated "Then I see every couple of blocks has that kind of store and just worry that the neighborhood would change to be like Times Square."' Concern over a triple -7X video store on Bleecker Street In Greenwich Village located 200 feet from a church and parochial school prompted an informal protest by residents that led to the cancellation of the lease. "To have a store with pictures of a donkey having sex with a woman located 40 yards from an elementary school is simply unaccept- able," said a member of a nearby block association. In another example, a report stated that about 400 residents marched and picketed a 24-hour triple -X video store on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn because, according to one civic leader, "it's a block and a half from an elementary school ... we feel it doesn't belong here." In Community Board 12 in the Bronx, residents organized several protests against a recently opened topless club because of its location. "The guy is surrounded by churches and schools," said the community board chairman, noting that the three other adult uses are in primarily commercial areas. In 1993, the Chelsea Action Coalition, in cooperation with Community Board No. 4, Manhattan, published the Chelsea Business Survey, which identified negative impacts associated with a concentration of sex-related businesses in that community. Of 100 businesses surveyed, 61 percent felt that the triple -X video stores had a negative impact on their businesses and 88 percent thought the potential for doing business in Chelsea has been negatively affected by the adult stores. Several impacts from adult entertainment establishments were no in a public hearing held October, 1993, by the Manhattan Borough President's Task Force on the Regulation of Sex - Related Businesses. More than 20 testified; approximately twice as many in favor of regulating adult businesses as those opposed to government regulation. W References to "Times Square" are often made by New Yorkers concerned about the proliferation and concentration of adult establishments. It is not hard to understand why. According to the 1983 Annual Report of the Mayor's Office of Midtown Enforcement, in the mid -1970's "Times Square was clop"ed with Pimps, johns, and hookers as well as the addicts and muggers who along with them preyed on the public." The report states that 1,200 prostitutes worked out of the dozen or so prostitution hotels and the 23 massage parlors concentrated along Eighth Avenue between 34th and 55th Streets, and another twelve sex businesses were wedged in between these businesses. 62 E VER00160