It could get easier to open an adult entertainment venue in Augusta.
Revisions approved by an Augusta committee Tuesday reduce distance requirements for adult venues and lift some restrictions on what dancers can do inside such establishments.
The changes don’t lift the zoning requirements that now keep adult venues out of downtown Augusta. Adult clubs, movie theaters and the like are permitted and can serve alcohol, but only in areas zoned light industrial or heavy industrial.
With the end of nude dancing at the Discotheque Lounge and Joker’s Lounge downtown, Augusta has had no strip clubs. The clubs were “grandfathered in” until the death of owner Whitey Lester, despite zoning and alcohol license requirements, because they pre-dated the rule changes. A recent federal appeals court ruling upheld the location requirements.
Augusta Planning and Development made no changes to the alcohol ordinance as it applies to adult venues. The venues can serve alcohol, but only where they are allowed to operate, in industrial zones.
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“We want to keep them in that area, but we want to give them an opportunity of having a successful business,” Commissioner Dennis Williams recently said. Williams made the motion in 2019 to reinstate alcohol sales at adult entertainment venues.
“As long as they put it in the proper zoning, it’s no big deal to me.”
The handful of changes, modeled after ordinances in use in Savannah, Atlanta and Columbia, S.C., are intended to make Augusta’s ordinance more “user-friendly,” said Commissioner Ben Hasan, who proposed the review of Augusta’s ordinances.
Drafted by Augusta Planning and Development, the proposed tweaks remove a ban on adult venues locating within 1,000 feet of each other. But they still can’t locate within 1,000 feet of a church, school, residential district, public park or cemetery.
Adult venues can move closer to certain major intersections. They can locate within 500 feet of the intersections of Gordon Highway with Doug Barnard Parkway, Peach Orchard Road and Walton Way. That’s a reduction from 1,000 feet. The minimum distance was reduced from 2,000 feet to 1,000 feet at the intersection of River Watch Parkway and I-20.
Inside the clubs, dancers are no longer required to perform alone on a two-foot platform, an existing requirement. They no longer must remain 10 feet apart or 10 feet from audience members. They don’t have to cover up before leaving the stage, mingling with patrons or waiting on tables. Requirements they remain on their feet at all times and accept tips only in a garter also have been removed.
One-on-one or “lap” dances are no longer banned but can be performed only if the rest of the audience can see them.
There hasn’t been a rush to fill the void left by the Discotheque and Joker’s Lounge, but interest exists.
Businesswoman Andrea Green said she wants to open a club with “bottle girls” that deliver bottles of alcohol to VIPs at the club, or a strip club with a restaurant, but hasn’t been able to find a suitable location.
“Everybody does that. Everybody has bottle girls,” Green said. While Augusta has “a lot of clubs,” it needs more, she said. “I just feel like Augusta needs extra clubs.”
Commissioner John Clarke said two groups out of Atlanta approached Augusta officials about possibly locating a strip club here. “I don’t know who they are or what they represent, but I know they were in Augusta awhile back,” he said.
Clarke said isolating the clubs in industrial areas might be less safe.
“The further out you move any club sometimes attracts the wrong type of people,” he said.
