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When it comes to sexually oriented businesses, community leaders on Salt Lake City’s west side make a good point – they don’t want them in their area.
We don’t blame them. Such businesses are no good. They do nothing to uplift or improve communities. Sadly, under constitutional protections of free expression and a spate of favorable court rulings, they’re allowed to exist.
Fortunately, though, cities can control where they go through the passage of zoning ordinances. Prompted by the unexpected transformation of a downtown Salt Lake City saloon into a strip club, the city council recently took action to limit the potential proliferation of such establishments.
Sexually oriented businesses, as they should, will be banned from the downtown area. By ordinance, they’ll be relegated to manufacturing districts and more general commercial districts. And that’s what justifiably riles west side residents and their leaders. Their neighborhoods abut the city’s manufacturing and commercial areas. Thousands of residents live nearby.
KSL encourages city council members to listen more sympathetically to the concerns of their west side constituents and eventually revisit the issue. Perhaps, it would be possible to be even more restrictive in where strip clubs and the like would be allowed. In KSL’s view, the very fringe of civilization is still too close for sexually oriented businesses.
