City Thwarted in Fight Over Topless Bar : North Hills: A 2-month-old court order suspends enforcement of an ordinance prohibiting such entertainment near residences.

The Los Angeles City Council tried Tuesday to close a North Hills topless bar under an ordinance prohibiting sex-oriented entertainment close to residences, but the bar’s management had already gotten a federal court order blocking the city action--which stymies enforcement of all such cases.

The council acted on the grounds that The Classy Lady, a beer bar on Sepulveda Boulevard, violated a 1986 city ordinance forbidding sexually oriented businesses from operating within 500 feet of residentially zoned land. The Classy Lady is only 100 feet from an apartment building.

By an 11-0 vote, the council denied the bar’s owner, Marilyn Gressman, an exemption from the city ordinance.

But she and the owners of 25 similar businesses had secured a preliminary injunction from U.S. District Court Judge Richard Gadboise in February, barring the city from enforcing the law while the businesses await trial of their lawsuits challenging the ordinance as unreasonable.

The city has appealed the ruling to a higher court, but the injunction temporarily suspends any attempt to enforce the ordinance, Deputy City Atty. Wayne Mooney said.

Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the area, said that when the vote was taken he was unaware of the existence of the court order. But he said the council should have acted anyway to prepare the way for closure of the bar when the court case is resolved.

The impasse has frustrated police, lawmakers and community activists, who counted on the law as a key weapon to push out sex-oriented businesses, which they contend increase street crime.

“It’s all tied up in the courts,” Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn., complained Tuesday.

The law sought to move existing sex businesses away from residential areas, while giving owners a grace period of five years to find a new business site. But in their federal court lawsuits against the city, the business owners argued that it is impossible to find alternate locations more than 500 feet from residentially zoned property, said attorney David Brown.

Brown represents the Classy Lady and three other bars that have challenged the law, including Thirsty’s in North Hills and the Star Garden in North Hollywood.

At a City Hall hearing in 1991, it was noted that the Classy Lady is within 100 feet of an apartment building where more than a dozen elementary school children live. Additionally, law enforcement authorities testified that the bar is in “one of the worst areas of the city” and presented a 36-page listing of crimes that had occurred since mid-1989 near Sepulveda and Roscoe boulevards, where the Classy Lady is located.

Others said the Classy Lady is in a census tract already inundated with bars, twice the maximum number for the neighborhood recommended by the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Michael Sanders of Granada Hills, manager of the Classy Lady, denied Tuesday that the bar is responsible for local crime.

“If we weren’t here, the crime in this area would be the same,” Sanders said, maintaining that the bar is an orderly place where drug sales and prostitution are not allowed. “We don’t even allow our girls to touch the customers,” he said.