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Niles council passes moratorium on sexually oriented businesses
By Jordan Cohen
NILES
City council has unanimously voted to place a one-year moratorium on permits for “sexually oriented businesses” after last week’s police raid on a Youngstown Road massage parlor that apparently was operating without a permit or license.
Police Chief Robert Hinton said his officers and agents from the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation executed a search warrant Dec. 13 at Susi Kim’s, the only massage parlor in the city, which supposedly had closed after its license expired last July.
“They were conducting business, and charges are pending, but we won’t be filing them for several weeks,” Hinton said. “We’re also waiting to see what BCI comes up with.”
Mayor Ralph Infante said prior to the permit’s expiration last summer, inspections by the police, fire and health departments uncovered code violations at Susi Kim’s that would have had to be corrected before a new license could be issued.
“We’ve got a whole folder on them,” the mayor said. “We sent them a notice of violations, but they did not respond or appeal.”
The new ordinance states that the 12-month length of the moratorium is necessary to allow for “considerable study and public input” in setting “reasonable regulation of adult entertainment land uses.” It defines sexually oriented businesses as adult bookstores, adult arcades, video and novelty stores and adult theaters. It does not, however, list massage parlors among the adult businesses to be regulated.
During the moratorium, the ordinance requires the planning commission and council to work on a regulation plan.
“We can use this time to put more meat on our ordinance,” the mayor said.
Terry Dull, city law director, said the moratorium is designed to prevent a district of adult-oriented stores from being established in Niles. “We’re doing what we are legally allowed to do, and I feel comfortable with the legality of the ordinance,” Dull said.
Infante said Niles wants to avoid what happened in Warren in 2011 when police uncovered prostitution and suspected human trafficking of women in a number of massage parlors, many of which subsequently were shut down.
“We found no evidence of human trafficking in our investigation here,” Hinton said.