Compromise Reached on Adult Bookstores : Oxnard: Seeking to avoid a costly legal battle, the City Council lets two shops remain where they are for up to nine years.

Two adult bookstores, threatened with eviction by a new law limiting the location of Oxnard’s adult businesses, will be allowed to stay put for up to nine years under a compromise forged this week.

The Oxnard City Council on Tuesday formally adopted the new law that restricts sexually oriented businesses to industrial areas.

But council members, convinced that the city would be subject to costly legal action, also agreed to allow Oxnard’s two adult bookstores to remain at their current locations possibly until the year 2002.

In return, the bookstores agreed not to challenge the new law in court.

“The purpose was to avoid litigation and this agreement accomplishes that purpose,” Assistant City Atty. Paula Kimbrell said Wednesday.

Adult bookstore representatives cheered the agreement, but those who worked to bring the anti-pornography law to fruition were unhappy with its watered-down results.

“I don’t want to have an adult bookstore sitting here another nine years in our neighborhood,” said Eleanor Branthoover, a member of the committee that helped draft the new law and a resident of the Rio Lindo neighborhood, which borders one of the bookstores in northeast Oxnard.

“It’s unfortunate we are going to be stuck with this,” she continued. “I wonder why the city even wasted our time if they weren’t really serious about the issue.”

The new law prohibits adult businesses within 1,000 feet of residential areas, and applies to adult bookstores, X-rated theaters, massage parlors and other adult-oriented shops.

As initially proposed, the law would have restricted adult businesses to an industrial area east of Oxnard’s La Colonia neighborhood and would have required the city’s two bookstores to move within 14 months.

Hundreds of residents jammed City Hall for a series of hearings on the proposal, most in favor of restrictions on adult businesses.

Bowing to legal threats by landowners in the designated adult-business area, the council broadened it to include a large industrial zone near La Colonia and a handful of smaller industrial zones scattered throughout the city.

Allen Camp, an attorney for the major landowner in the area initially singled out by the ordinance, said Wednesday his client no longer is considering legal action.

“We are satisfied at this point,” Camp said. “The fact that they broadened the geographical scope of the areas that could conceivably be a location for these types of uses has solved our principal concern.”

But the council faced more legal threats from adult bookstore owners, who charged that the new law created harsh financial hardships.

The settlement agreement reached late Tuesday will allow Mr. K’s Bookstore in South Oxnard to remain at its location until May, 1999, when its lease expires. At that time, the bookstore can apply to the council for a three-year extension.

The other adult business--Oxnard Book and Video in the city’s northeast area--can stay put until 2002. However, the store can apply in 1998 to relocate to a zone not created by the new law, subject to council approval.

Elaine Gurrola, owner of the shopping center where Mr. K’s has been for 14 years, said the agreement appears to be a fair compromise. But she said she remains puzzled by all the fuss surrounding the bookstore.

“They have been good tenants and good neighbors to our other tenants,” Gurrola said of Mr. K’s. “And their customers come in nice cars, are well dressed and mind their own business. They have really been trouble-free.”

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