According to the Courier-Journal's Ben Zion Hershberg, it's nothing but bad news for New Albany today as the city's brain trust contemplates its next headlong retreat in a laughably ill-considered struggle against 1st Amendment rights.
(1) No matter what else happens in the short term, Adult DVD is free to open its doors at the current location in the west end.
(2) If the city of New Albany, having suffered a $69,000 defeat in its first skirmish with Adult DVD, wishes to whip the store in court, it will have to wait as much as two years and allow the store's operation to continue at the current site until then.
(3) Accordingly, the city proposes to settle with Adult DVD, which might cost as much as $350,000.
You read that right ... $350,000.
(4) Because the fiscal dike has sprung another leak -- the city just learned that it owes $2 million on an unpaid loan dating to 2003 -- there probably isn't any money for such a settlement unless Adult DVD agrees to a cup of coffee and a handshake at Little Chef.
Shall we all begin selling adult materials and queue up for the buy-out?
Unpaid loan may restrict/hinder settlement - New Albany still at odds with store, by Ben Zion Hershberg
It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in New Albany that any independent business that opens in New Albany is assumed to be doomed and that the owners are assumed to be either crazy, stupid, or have money to throw away while it is assumed that an adult DVD store will not only be successful, but is worth $350,000 before it ever opens.
ReplyDeleteIf the city council did not want adult businesses in New Albany they should have been paying attention to the new adult ordinances that were being drafted by the Metro government when Louisville and Jefferson county merged. Did they think that they were all going to go to Shepherdsville? The city council made a mistake and they should live with it.
This issue is a major blow, no pun intended, to the NA downtown Renaissance plans. First the sewage plant that is only 7 blocks from downtown and now this. If this is allowed to happen, what will stop more of the same from taking place?
ReplyDeleteBrandon: Any effort to target the typical Caesar's visitor probably must be restricted to one niche or the other, as a quick survey of the nightly crowd there yields little hope that more than a few might be diverted to unique shops and/or bistros. I'm not saying it can't be done, only that the majority of people hitting the Boat are there for the "gaming" and little else.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you. Nice to see you quoted in the Indiana Weekly article ... say, mind if I borrow $2 million, promise to pay you back if I can remember borrowing it.
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