Centennial – A business park where the city’s largest employers are located told city leaders to look elsewhere when deciding where to allow sexually oriented businesses to operate.
Now, the City Council is expected to approve the original plan, which called for a roughly 10-block area along Interstate 25 and near the Greenwood Village border.
At a special meeting Monday night, city leaders said they wouldn’t consider other alternatives when they meet again Sept. 7, but they wanted to provide more public notice before they approve the original site. The council members are not expected to allow public testimony when they reconsider the plan next month.
Dozens of residents protested the I-25 site at a meeting Aug. 15 and asked the council to consider zoning adult businesses closer to Centennial Airport.
“This City Council has given this ordinance a great deal of thought and deliberated hard on this ordinance,” Councilwoman Becky Lennon said at Monday night’s meeting. “Not everyone is going to be happy with any decision that we make.”
When Centennial incorporated in 2001, it inherited ordinances that allow adult businesses at dozens of sites across the city. Anticipating that such a business would eventually try to open, the city imposed a year-long moratorium to study where and under what conditions a sexually oriented business could operate.
Dozens of area residents and business owners protested the city’s original site – east of I-25, south of East Arapahoe Road and north of East Geddes Avenue and bordered by South Havana Street on the east.
In response, the council reconsidered an undeveloped area near Centennial Airport.
However, after further study and a letter from major corporations near the airport, city leaders dismissed the idea.
In an Aug. 15 letter from the board of directors of the Centennial Airport Center, which includes giants such as Oppenheimer Funds, Raytheon and Jeppesen, the city was informed that the business park’s covenant does not accept sexually oriented businesses. A representative for the board declined to comment Tuesday.
City leaders also took into account that parcels near the airport are much larger than the original zoned sites.
“They’re huge,” Mayor Randy Pye said. “One of those parcels is about as large as the entire area we set aside before.”
Jim Michopoulos, owner of Michelle at Arapahoe Station, a popular candy parlor near the city’s original zone, said a strip club around the corner would hurt businesses that cater to children.
“I would like to see it completely out of this area here,” Michopoulos said. “We’re all worried about the increase in crime, in traffic and in drunk drivers. We want to try to keep stuff like that from happening in an area saturated with children and children’s businesses.”
Staff writer Manny Gonzales can be reached at 303-820-1173 or mgonzales@denverpost.com
