Council says no to strip club

YAKIMA -- There were few surprises and the Yakima City Council wasted little time getting it over with.

The council quickly and unanimously supported a hearing examiner's decision to deny an adult business license for a strip club Tuesday night as incompatible with other businesses on the city's main drag.

The night's one, and perhaps only, twist had to do with community input. There was an expectation of a standing-room only crowd. Instead, the City Hall chamber was half empty, totaling about 25 people in all.

Asked afterwards whether he would appeal up the food chain to Superior Court, applicant Jamie Muffett nodded yes. "Yeah, definitely," he said before deferring further comment to his lawyer, J.J. Sandlin, who was out of town.

The anticlimactic appeal hearing was just the latest development in a controversy that began in March, when the Yakima Herald-Republic first reported Muffett's plan for the Sinsations strip club in a vacant carpet store at 2308 S. First St.

Facebook sites with hundreds of followers cropped up overnight, and a day-long hearing in May elicited hours of testimony from the public that was almost uniformly opposed to Yakima's first strip club since the 1980s.

In May, it seemed that Muffet and his attorney, Sandlin, were just about the only proponents of the club.

With Sandlin gone, Muffett spoke to the council for several minutes and said he continues to feel the real issue is widespread moral opposition, not the compatibility issue as cited by Hearing Examiner Gary Cuillier.

"It's not slavery. The girls choose to dance," he said, adding "It's a legal, viable part of Washington state law. All I'm asking is to look at the law, not the moral part of it."

Muffett also accused city officials of using a slippery compatibility standard as a way to rationalize moral and politically calculated opposition.

He noted the city adopted an adult business license last year that theoretically allows strip clubs in commercial zones -- state law prohibits zoning them out of existence -- with restrictions that create 500-foot buffer zones around schools, day cares, churches, parks and residential areas.

"How do you become compatible to another business? Is Jack in the Box compatible with a car lot?" he asked, adding, "I just went off your parameters, submitted an application, and that's why we're here."

Only four opponents spoke during Tuesday's second round on the issue. Under the quasi-judicial rules in place for such land-use appeals, testimony was limited to evidence already on the record.

Among the opponents was Lori Nay, an Edward Jones financial adviser who recounted her decision to relocate her downtown office to a new spot just a stone's throw from the old Pay-Less carpet store.

The decision to move was made for safety reasons, she said, adding, "I do not believe I'm going to feel safer with a strip club across the street."

Selah physician James Zingerman, who used to practice in Orlando, Fla., recalled a nightclub there, and he suggested it had more to offer in terms of night life than Disney World.

He said he treated dancers occasionally for sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies, saying, "They were solicited for sex outside these establishments. I think that's more than a moral issue."

Only three of seven council members -- Maureen Adkison, Dave Ettl and Kathy Coffey -- had anything to say on the subject. And their comments were limited.

Adkison said her native town of Boston saw a healthy gentrification after it closed down adult businesses in the city's core. Ettl touched on land-use issues and made comparisons to the ground zero mosque controversy in New York City. Coffey praised Cuillier's legal reasoning.

"Normally, my inclination is to support" the rights of small business owners, she said, recalling her opposition last year to a threatened crackdown on scantily clad baristas.

Cuillier, however, made a "clear cut case" that Muffett's application was incompatible with neighboring businesses, she concluded.

The council's trio of self-identified fiscal conservatives -- Mayor Micah Cawley and council members Rick Ensey and Bill Lover -- made no public remarks.

Councilman and former mayor Dave Edler also refrained from comment, although he made the motion to uphold Cuillier's decision. No one was surprised, given his vocation as a pastor and his outspoken opposition to bikini baristas.

Also silent was Al Maza, who owns the Carpet Tile property next to the old Pay-Less carpet store and who early on emerged as the most vocal opponent to Muffett's application.

Maza, along with his wife and business partner, Susan, were in attendance. Afterwards, they said they expected the City Council's decision and are curious to see if Muffett will follow through on his threat to go to court.

Said Maza, "Be a good time to have a crystal ball."

* Chris Bristol can be reached at 509-577-7748 or cbristol@yakimaherald.com.