THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 1996 TAG: 9604030548
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
Adult movie theaters, topless dance halls and other ``commercial nudity establishments'' have no place on a family-oriented beach like the Outer Banks, Kitty Hawk officials agree.
``We want to maintain a certain type of image as a resort community,'' Town Planner Richard Reid said Tuesday. ``We really think adult video arcades and X-rated movie theaters would have an extremely negative impact on our small community down here. Those are not things we, as a community, want.''
The five-member Kitty Hawk Town Council voted unanimously Monday night to enact a one-year ban on sexually oriented businesses opening in their beach town.
Council members also adopted a definition of ``commercial nudity establishment,'' which the public can comment on during their May 6 meeting. Such establishments, the definition says, include any place where ``the public may enter, with or without admission charge or membership, wherein nudity is exhibited by employees or entertainers.''
Nudity, the definition says, ``shall mean any exposure to public view of the human male or female genitals, pubic area or buttocks with less than full opaque covering, or any portion of the areola of the breast of a female with less than opaque covering.''
In the past year, officials in all four Outer Banks beach towns have begun trying to control adult entertainment establishments - from banning them entirely to restricting such facilities to certain industrially zoned areas.
Nags Head commissioners will discuss an update on their own ``adult entertainment'' standards at a board meeting this morning. Such businesses have been banned in Nags Head for a year. Elected officials in Kill Devil Hills and Southern Shores also are discussing policies on sexually oriented establishments.
``We're all dealing with the same issues,'' Reid said. ``All the towns on the beach will have to work on this together. We're going to try to get someone to come in here and do a study of the secondary impacts these types of businesses would have on the community - and we hope to get all the towns involved in contributing money for that study.
``We certainly hope we can ban these sorts of establishments entirely,'' said Reid. ``If we don't do something, they're going to come. So we're going to try to make the argument that Kitty Hawk has always been a family-oriented community.
``It's very complicated because these issues involve First Amendment rights. When the Constitution says you have a right to free expression, it's pretty hard to ban those businesses outright.
``But it's also pretty hard to allow businesses like that to open when there's such a strong sentiment in the community against it.'' by CNB