Manager Threatens Move Over Zoning Laws : Downtown Glendale to Get Peep Shows

After being told that he cannot operate video peep booths in an industrial part of Glendale, the manager of the city’s only sexually oriented bookstore said he plans to move his shop to downtown Glendale, one of the few areas where zoning laws would permit such a business.

“What we are planning on doing is looking for locations in the Glenoaks Boulevard, Brand Boulevard, Glendale Avenue area,” Gary Enea, manager of Unique News and Video, said in an interview.

Last week, Glendale zoning officials denied a permit application filed by Enea that would have allowed him to reopen about 20 token-operated video booths.

The booths, which offer patrons a preview of videos for sale and for rent, were ordered shut by a judge Jan. 11.

“The undesired effect of this decision is that the city is going to get an adult book store and video arcade in its downtown,” said Roger Diamond, attorney for Enea and Daniel Bishop, who owns the store.

According to zoning administrator John W. McKenna, the type of permit that would allow operation of the video booths cannot be issued to businesses along the industrial stretch of San Fernando Road near Colorado Boulevard where the bookstore is situated. Instead, McKenna said, the permit can be issued only in Glendale’s central business district and several other areas near downtown.

Enea said Monday that he will first appeal the decision, then begin searching for a downtown location.

“The city has had 82 years to enact a legislative ordinance with regard to this type of business,” Enea said. “Then, all of a sudden, they wake up and find that we’re here and they scramble to legislate us out of business.”

Glendale Mayor Ginger Bremberg said she doubts that Enea will move downtown, since the permit would require that he provide adequate parking “and there isn’t any.” Moreover, she predicted that a move downtown would be bad for his business. “Nobody wants to be seen going into a place like that,” she said.

Unique News and Video has been the focus of legal controversy since its opening in May, 1986.

Since then, Glendale police have arrested 15 men on suspicion of lewd conduct inside the store’s video preview booths.

In November, a Glendale judge found Enea and Bishop guilty of violating a city permit by installing booths without permission. The booths were installed about a week after the store opened.

Glendale Municipal Judge Cheryl Krott is scheduled to decide whether the booths must be removed, a decision she withheld pending the city’s action on the store’s application.