Adelaide City Council backs bid to zone all adult entertainment businesses to Hindley Street

Strict new rules backed by Adelaide City Council would redefine which red light developments get the green light in the city’s CBD.

Strip clubs and sex shops will be confined to Hindley St, if new planning laws endorsed by the Adelaide City Council are adopted after a public consultation process was launched on Tuesday.

Called the adult entertainment and adult products and services code amendment, it proposes that development applications for “adult entertainment premises’’ in the “capital city zone’’ of the CBD will require a “buffer distance of 50 metres from existing residential uses or land used for a place of worship, childcare centre, primary school or secondary school’’.

The capital city zone is the largest in the CBD but even if a new development was outside the 50m limit, the new amendments would make it very difficult to win approval.

“As the pre-eminent evening and late-night entertainment hub for metropolitan Adelaide, it is proposed that the Hindley Street Subzone is the most appropriate location for future development of adult entertainment premises,’’ the consultation document says.

“Hindley Street is already home to two of Adelaide’s biggest adult entertainment venues.’’

It defines an adult entertainment premise as one “used for the exhibition, display, or performance of any entertainment or act which is sexually explicit such as nude dancing or lap dancing’’.

The amendments also say any applications for strip clubs or sex shops in the city living zone in the west and east of the CBD, as well as North Adelaide are “unlikely to be supported’’.

The same criteria applies for applications in the city main street zone, which includes Rundle Mall and Rundle St.

The document says existing premises that are currently outside Hindley St will not be forced to close.

It names Pole Position on Pirie St, The Firm on North Terrace, the Aphrodite Lounge on Waymouth St, Club X on King William St and Phoenix Pleasure on O’Connell St that are currently outside the zone.

The document also says current planning laws were “silent’’ on where adult entertainment premises could be located.

Adelaide MP Lucy Hood said she had approached the Adelaide City Council a year ago to point out this loophole in planning law after residents in the east end had voiced concerns that such establishments could open in that area.

“There was a concern about how to protect the character of the east end,’’ Ms Hood said. “They didn’t want it becoming a Hindley St 2.0.’’

Consultation will close on July 23.

A City of Adelaide spokesperson said the purpose of the amendment was “to guide the location of new premises offering adult entertainment or adult products to certain parts of the Adelaide CBD and North Adelaide’’.