DATE: Tuesday, August 26, 1997              TAG: 9708260010

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   47 lines

GO-GO BARS WARRANTED RESTRAINTS

Some businesses exert degrading influences on neighborhoods, including commercial areas. Norfolk is empowered to regulate businesses to some degree. Norfolk City Council is bent on strengthening the regulatory shield protecting neighborhoods from go-go bars and honky-tonks.

A proposed ordinance would erect impediments aimed at checking the transformation of family restaurants into places unsuitable to their surroundings. Good! Action sooner would have been better, but that's water over the dam. Other South Hampton Roads cities that lack such neighborhood protections might consider adopting them now.

A public hearing on the proposed Norfolk ordinance is scheduled for tonight at 7:30. The hearing may be lively. The measure being considered is responsive to well-founded fears expressed by some Norfolk neighborhood groups.

But some restaurant proprietors are troubled by yet another layer of regulations. That Norfolk City Hall has sensibly involved restaurateurs in discussions about the prospective ordinance is prudent.

Many enterprises disrupt neighborhoods and adversely affect property values. Even churches and nursing homes may be disruptive. ``Adult'' businesses clearly are.

Go-go bars do not promote a ``family atmosphere.'' And the problem isn't confined to Norfolk. A go-go bar projected for a shopping center off Lynnhaven Parkway in Virginia Beach triggered protests from other businesses, including some that cater to children. The planned go-go bar would occupy an existing seafood and pasta restaurant. Other shopping-center businesses and their customers and local residential neighborhoods are up in arms about the possible change in the restaurant's role. Similar grass-roots protests blocked the opening of another proposed go-go bar on Shore Drive.

The proposed Norfolk law would erect regulatory impediments to the transmutation of family restaurants into places conspicuously unappealing to families and damaging by their very nature to surrounding businesses and residential areas.

Norfolk's reach for regulation is well-directed. Additional regulation to preserve the character and property values of family-friendly areas is necessary.

Restaurants, which are already regulated, have every right to resist the imposition of more rules. But Norfolk is obligated to prevent deterioration of neighborhoods and erosion of the municipal tax base. Inappropriate placement of go-go bars is a proper public concern.

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