Simi Targets Nude Dance Activities : Adult entertainment: City proposal banning such actions as ‘table dancing’ is intended to ensure that naked dancers can’t touch spectators.

With a legal battle looming over their rejection of a proposed nude dance club, Simi Valley officials moved Wednesday to tighten city codes to ensure that naked dancers cannot touch spectators.

City Atty. John Torrance said he has prepared a change in city codes for Monday’s City Council meeting that is meant to quash “lap dancing,” “table dancing” and other close encounters of the lewd kind.

But rather than forbidding unwholesome behavior, Torrance took a more novel approach: forbidding architecture that allows it.

Simi Valley’s city code allows nude dancing only in buildings defined as “theaters,” Torrance said in a report he wrote for the City Council. So he clarified the definition of “theater.”

The proposed code change “requires that ‘theater, concert hall, or other establishment’ have a permanent stage, a minimum of 30 inches in height, with permanently affixed seats arranged for an unobstructed view of the stage for spectators,” Torrance’s report states.

“The stage must have a floor area of not less than 750 square feet and no spectator seat may be closer than three feet from the edge of the stage,” the report states.

Coupled with city codes specifically forbidding waiters or waitresses from exposing themselves to patrons, that change should guarantee that patrons and entertainers could only engage in close contact with their clothes on, the report said.

Said Torrance Wednesday: “We wanted to prevent the community from being exposed to the secondary effects of these activities, to the extent that we can control the law.”

Nightclub applicant Philip Young could not be reached Wednesday afternoon for comment.

But his attorney, Roger Diamond, said the ordinance could make the legal battle even tougher.

Young sued the city, alleging it violated his rights when it blocked his plans to build a nude dance club in 1993. Young has continued to pursue the club, modifying his plans in an attempt to win city approval.

The original, 11,000-square-foot, two-story complex proposed for western Los Angeles Avenue was to include a juice bar, nude dancing and adult bookstore, boutique and video shop.

But the second floor was cut out earlier this past summer--leaving only the juice bar and dance theater--after it proved too costly to meet city code requirements to install an elevator to accommodate the physically disabled, Diamond has said.

“If the effect of these ordinances is to preclude [Young] from operating, it strengthens our lawsuit,” Diamond said Wednesday. “He has a right to operate someplace, and the city cannot disguise its opposition by proposing other regulations, the purpose of which is to prevent opening.

“They can regulate it, but they can’t ban it” under current zoning laws, Diamond said. If the city loses the court battle and the zoning codes governing nude clubs are struck down, he added, Simi Valley could see clubs built just about anywhere in town.

A band of opponents calling themselves Simi Citizens R Against Pornography (SCRAP) has condemned the nude dance club plan from the start as “a porn mall” that has no business in their city.

SCRAP leader Steve Frank applauded the proposed code change.

“This is a good start,” Frank said Wednesday. But, he added, “this does not go far enough.”

“You can make these minor changes,” he said. “But the fact is, it will still bring to this community crime, degradation, lowered property values in the area and an image to the community that is unacceptable.”

SCRAP wants the city to order the club’s owners to pay for any devaluation of property, Frank said.

And the group--which mustered 250 protesters for a demonstration against the club last month--also wants the city to charge the business a crime impact fee to offset the cost of fighting any crime that might stem from its operations.

Said Frank: “I don’t believe you can put a price on a clean community.”