VENTURA : Restrictions Backed on Adult Businesses

Adult-oriented businesses would be prohibited from locating in most Ventura neighborhoods under a proposed law approved Tuesday night by the city Planning Commission.

The proposed ordinance, which must be given final approval by the City Council, would ban adult theaters, bookstores and other such enterprises from all but a few industrial areas. Those areas are mostly south of the Ventura Freeway, roughly between Victoria and Arundell avenues, city planners said.

The commission voted 6 to 1 to recommend the proposed law, with Commissioner Ted Temple opposed. Temple said he supports the measure but was concerned that use of the term adult-oriented business was not blunt enough, and that such businesses should be described as sexually oriented.

The commission also asked staff to prepare a report for the council to find out if the city can prohibit such businesses from locating within 100 to 200 feet of each other. However, staff members said that might result in too few available sites and would not be legally defensible under the First Amendment.

“The thing I’m afraid of . . . is that Callens Road (where many of the businesses could be located) could become a red-light district,” Commissioner Mike Jones said in asking for the report.

The city has had an interim ordinance for two years that allowed a pre-existing, adult-oriented business on Main Street to continue operating, but prohibited any new such businesses from opening in the city.

Council members approved the interim law after church groups and downtown merchants objected to a request to open an adult-oriented business near the Ventura County superintendent of schools office on Main Street.

The new ordinance would prohibit adult-oriented businesses within 500 feet of schools, homes, churches, parks or anywhere else children might congregate.

The measure “would not set anything in stone,” City Planner Mitch Oshinsky said.

Under the proposal, adult-oriented businesses could locate in any of the designated areas. However, the city would consider each request on a case-by-case basis, Oshinsky said.