Due to what Mayor Wayne Baldwin referred to as a “hiccup,” White Rock council redid third and final readings to its controversial zoning amendment defining parameters for ‘adult entertainment’ – or strip clubs – in the city.
In an “administrative oversight,” according to staff, council approved an unrevised version of the bylaw on Feb. 19. That meant final readings of the bylaw had to be rescinded and voted on again at Monday evening’s meeting, which was done without further comment.
The bylaw essentially outlaws such land-use anywhere in the city but in a few commercial properties in the Central Plaza and Royal Place areas, specifies that such entertainment cannot be run in conjunction with a liquor licence, that it not be visible from outside the premises and that the minimum lot width for such use be 45 metres.
The version council initially voted on lacked two paragraphs that imposed even more stringent limits: that “any lot accommodating an adult entertainment use must have a lot line common with North Bluff Road,” and that “any establishment accommodating an adult entertainment use must be set back a minimum of 50 metres from Johnston Road and 30 metres from any other public road.”
At the public hearing on the bylaw on Feb. 19, many residents – most of them from the Sussex House development adjacent to Central Plaza – said they feared that even contemplating such a land use within the city would open the door to inappropriate businesses, as well as organized crime and drug trafficking.
But Baldwin was at pains to reassure them that a zoning bylaw, and an associated business bylaw amendment, defining highly limited parameters for such businesses, was the most effective way to discourage adult entertainment or “exotic dancing” – not in itself illegal in Canada – from within city limits.
“I don’t know how we could be more clear,” he told residents at the public hearing. “Our intention is not to have this.”