City's strip-club legal woes far from over

Though the city of Athens has given up on trying to block a planned strip club on Stimson Avenue through a legal case in county Common Pleas Court, it's still facing a federal free-speech lawsuit over the project.

The county-level legal suit, which the city lost, largely resolved the zoning issues surrounding the proposed "gentleman's club."

The federal suit, however, is seeking money damages, based on allegations that in denying the club a permit for some three years, the city violated the First Amendment rights of the business that wants to start it, and cost the owner of the building where it's planned a great deal of money in rents.

"It's pending, and at this point we have no reason to dismiss it," reported attorney Henry Louis Sirkin, who represents plaintiffs Demetrios Prokos and Christopher Stotts. "There are damages, and there are substantial damages that have been caused."

Prokos owns the Stimson Avenue building in which Stotts' company, Three Wide Entertainment, wants to start a club featuring nude dancers.

In late December, Athens Law Director Patrick Lang announced that the city wouldn't appeal a judge's decision in favor of the strip-club backers. This ended a three-year legal battle in Athens County Common Pleas Court, over the city's repeated refusal to grant the project a zoning permit.

Three Wide first applied in 2008, and was turned down by the Athens Board of Zoning Appeals. The company appealed to the common pleas court, and in June 2010, Judge Michael Ward ruled that the board had exceeded its authority in making its decision, because it took into consideration legally irrelevant issues such as the morality of a strip club. Ward did not overturn the board's ruling, but sent the case back for reconsideration.

At a meeting last June, the board once again voted to deny the strip club a permit. Prokos and Stotts then filed the federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus, alleging that their free-speech rights had been curtailed.

Three Wide also filed an administrative appeal of the zoning board decision. Last November, Athens County Common Pleas Judge L. Alan Goldsberry once again ruled in Three Wide's favor, finding that the board's denial of a permit for the club was illegal.

Not long afterward, Lang announced that the city was dropping the legal fight against the club.

This still leaves the federal suit very much alive, however – and that's the one that could potentially end up costing the city some money.

In the suit, the plaintiffs have claimed that when, in April 2008, Athens City Council adopted a new city ordinance regulating "sexually oriented businesses," this law was aimed specifically at Three Wide and its strip-bar project.

The claim the ordinance was designed "to silence plaintiffs from engaging in constitutionally protected speech." (Erotic dancing, as is well-established in case law, is a First Amendment-protected form of expression.)

Stotts and Prokos have asked for monetary damages based on lost business opportunities at the Stimson Avenue site; out-of-pocket expenses; and a judicial declaration that the city zoning code violates both the Ohio and U.S. constitutions as it's being applied to the Stimson site.

The suit does not ask for a specific dollar amount, but Prokos has said that he's been without rent at the site since 2007. He has told The Athens NEWS that he believes he could get at least $10 per square foot in rent for the 17,000-square-foot building, but that city zoning restrictions have blocked a number of commercial tenants he tried to bring in.

Based on these figures, Prokos could conceivably claim to have lost over $500,000 worth of rents since the legal dispute over the strip club began.

"They're claiming that the city's denial of the application to use the property as a strip club violated their First Amendment rights," confirmed William Charles Curley, attorney for the city.

The city has answered the suit, denying that it violated the plaintiffs' free-speech rights.

Sirkin, however, said Tuesday that the city of Athens "had at least two opportunities" to do the right thing legally. "At some point, governments have to act right," he added. "It's unbelievable to me that the city of Athens acted the way that they acted."