Residents hope new law will close down adult businesses.

SEVERAL years ago, Cristi Walden spearheaded a $70,000 beautification project along Pico Boulevard in her West Los Angeles neighborhood.

Her group placed hundreds of sycamores, sidewalk benches and designer trash cans along the three-quarter-mile stretch between Bundy Drive and Cotner Avenue, hoping to make the area attractive to shoppers and neighborhood residents.

But the aesthetic improvements did little to overshadow the influx of adult entertainment businesses.

Walden found used condoms and drug paraphernalia outside the neighborhood's strip clubs. Neighbors complained of patrons parking their vehicles to engage in sexual trysts.

"(Adult entertainment) has taken the wind out of our sails," said Walden, who in late February moved out of her home of 15 years to another area of the city. "I've had volunteers ask me why are we still working on this when we are just beautifying the street for the strip clubs."

That's not to say the stretch of Pico is devoid of thriving shops and restaurants. But the area also has six adult entertainment businesses, most of which opened in the past two years. There are large billboards advertising the strip clubs and adult video stores operating near homes, churches, schools and businesses.

Last week, the L.A. City Council passed an ordinance that will place new restrictions on adult businesses operating within city limits. Residents, landlords and mainstream business owners along Pico are hoping the measures will drive adult business owners out of the area.

Under the new rules, strip club dancers must keep at least six feet away from club patrons, and all adult businesses are required to have a security guard on the premises during business hours.

Club owners deny their presence has a negative impact on other nearby businesses, and attribute vacancy problems to the sluggish economy. "They are just looking at us as a scapegoat," said Gabriel Chaidez, manager of Fantasy Island, strip club on Pico.

Relying on ordinance

The area consisted mostly of bean fields when it was incorporated as the city of Sawtelle, named after W.E. Sawtelle, a prominent local banker, in 1906.

Sawtelle's approximate boundaries were Sepulveda Boulevard to the east, Centinela Avenue, up to Wilshire Boulevard to the north and Olympic Boulevard to the south.

The new city was comprised of 1,500 residents, most of whom were of Mexican or Japanese decent. By the early 1920s, the population grew to 3,500. After years of political and legal wrangling, residents in 1922 voted to make the city part of Los Angeles.

Pico soon became a bustling strip of mom-and-pop businesses. "This community has a rich heritage and we have roots here," said Sylvia Nickel, president of the Westside Residents Association and a West L.A. resident since 1964. "We want to preserve our way of life."

But according to the West L.A. chamber, the only new business to move into the neighborhood in the last year and a half has been Big Daddy's, a sex toy and lingerie shop catering in part to the dancers at the strip clubs.

Meanwhile, numerous businesses have relocated or closed their doors, including Bo-Jay's Pizzeria, a mainstay on Pico for decades, and the Gig, a nightclub replaced by strip club Plan B.

Recently, a building that once housed a popular Japanese restaurant was torn down after months of vacancy, and a photo shop owner packed up and moved to Santa Monica.

West L.A. Print and Copy, which was adjacent to a strip club called Silver Reign, moved to another Westside location in late 2001, in part because the strip club and its patrons were taking up too much parking, making noise and loitering.

"Rent increases, poor space and the unpredictable risk factor next door gave us an incentive to look for somewhere else to go," said Alan Platt, West L.A. Print and Copy's co-owner.

Roger Diamond, a Santa Monica attorney representing about two dozen strip clubs fighting the ordinance, blames the city.

"They make it so difficult for adult businesses to operate and are always threatening closure that it creates a disincentive to remodel, upgrade and maintain a facility," he said.

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