Plans for Nude Juice Bar Rejected in Garden Grove

Although only two neighbors spoke against it, the City Council this week rejected plans for a club with nude women dancing for customers sipping nonalcoholic beverages.

Council members said they denied the application to establish the so-called nude juice bar primarily because it did not have adequate parking, but also because of a potential increase in crime and decrease in property values in the neighborhood.

“I would certainly like to see this project approved because we certainly need the income to the city of Garden Grove,” said Councilman J. Tilman Williams. “I can’t approve it because of the parking. I just don’t think it has enough parking.”

But the attorney for applicant Waldon R. Welty said the parking issue was a smoke screen and claimed that his client’s First Amendment rights were being violated.

The Planning Commission earlier rejected Welty’s request to replace his adult bookstore, A-Z Books, and a vacant house behind it on Garden Grove Boulevard with a 4,226-square-foot, two-story structure on grounds that parking was inadequate and because of traffic and safety concerns.

Welty and his attorney, Roger J. Diamond, said they thought the nude-dancing facility could meet city requirements. A real-estate appraiser hired by Welty said he concluded after an extensive study that the business would not lower property values, and a professional traffic engineer retained by Welty said he thought the bar as proposed would have more than adequate parking.

The city has been battling adult businesses along Garden Grove Boulevard for years. Its legal battle with Welty began in 1980, when he opened A-Z Books and successfully challenged the city’s requirement that he obtain a conditional-use permit. Currently, there are three pending lawsuits involving the two parties. On Tuesday, Diamond vowed to file another.

City officials maintain that A-Z Books has been the site of cruising, solicitation, loitering, lewd conduct and noise. They also cited a city-commissioned UC Irvine report that said the expansion of adult businesses leads to increased crime, lower property values and other negative effects, particularly when they are near taverns. There are 10 bars near A-Z Books, city officials said.

Diamond criticized the city for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money in fighting A-Z Books and now the nude juice bar.

But the two neighbors who spoke against the project said they are more concerned with the effects of the businesses.

“I don’t care how much money it costs to keep my kids safe in this neighborhood,” said Charles Kelly, who lives on Coast Street near the bookstore.