Johnsburg revamps adult entertainment ordinance

JOHNSBURG – Just to be clear, no speakeasies, dance halls or more-than-massage parlors have voiced interest in calling Johnsburg home.

Despite this lack of interest, Johnsburg’s Village Board has taken the opportunity to freshen up its adult entertainment ordinance.

“Basically we’re making arrangements in case this comes up down the road,” Village President Ed Hettermann said. “We have to allow use for that type of entertainment by law – we’re just trying to control where it could be.”

The “definitions” section of the ordinance is necessarily anatomically descriptive and conjures up visuals that could easily cause some to blush.

The overarching term “adult business” includes establishments such as adults-only bookstores, adults-only motion picture theaters, and adult entertainment centers, rap parlors, adults-only nightclubs or adults-only saunas, “where explicit sexual conduct is depicted and/or sexual activity is explicitly or implicitly encouraged or tolerated.”

Interested parties can submit a $50 application and, if approved, can pay $2,000 for a yearlong license.

The catch, Hettermann said, is that these types of establishments have been given industrial zoning and conditional use, meaning that not only would they be limited to opening their doors in an industrial park, but all the other businesses in that industrial park would get to voice their opinions on the matter.

“This is just meant to prevent a legal challenge,” said Michael Smoron, the village’s attorney. “We certainly don’t want to encourage this type of business, but we do have to allow it to a certain extent.

“It’s us trying to put the reasonable limitations that we can on these and still stay on the right side of the First Amendment.”

Attorney Melissa Cooney is the author of the village’s adult entertainment ordinance and said Johnsburg is by no means alone in having this type of rule on the books.

Cooney, like Smoron, is an attorney at Zukowski, Rogers, Flood and McArdle, and said that a number of their municipal clients had adult entertainment ordinances drafted at the same time, and they were all done the same.

“I don’t know about all of them, but my guess is that most municipalities in the county do have these,” she said.

Cooney said her firm had done ordinances for Johnsburg, Woodstock, Algonquin, Lake in the Hills, Lakewood, Harvard and McHenry.