“We broke out the champagne and had a street party,” North Side resident Barbara Talerico told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We brought chairs, or pillows for sitting on the stoops, and toasted our victory.”

Also thrilled was Mulugetta Birru, executive director of the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, which will gain control of the property.

“I am so happy for the [North Side] residents,” he said. “They have wanted to improve the area around Federal Street and North Avenue since the late 1980s.”

Birru told the Post-Gazette that the Garden Theater has been a major hurdle in redevelopment efforts.

“It’s in front of the park,” he said. “It’s a main artery in North Side neighborhoods.”

PORN CONVICTION IN SALT LAKE CITY
In what is described as the biggest porn prosecution since “Operation Deep Throat” in the 1970s, the owner of a magazine and video store pleaded guilty April 19 to distributing pornography.

The three felonies and one misdemeanor count were the result of a plea agreement. Irshad Hussain Sial, owner of Bob’s Magazine ad Video, was originally charged with 51 felonies, including money laundering and racketeering. Third District Judge Ronald Nehring ordered Sial to spend 15 days in jail, pay a $15,000 fine, and serve three years on probation.

“We got everything we wanted out of this plea agreement,” Salt Lake City Prosecutor Simarjit Gill told The Salt Lake Tribune. “It’s like I told him, the times are changing. This isn’t allowed anymore.”

Just three decades ago, sexually oriented businesses could be found across downtown Salt Lake City.

According to court documents, an undercover officer visited Sial’s shop on October 14, 2000, asking for adult videos. Sial told the officer that only “cable-version” videos were available under Utah law. When the officer said he wanted “real stuff,” Sial brought out two hard-core videos. Undercover law-enforcement officers purchased 11 more videos, and authorities seized more than 100 others through a search warrant on February 18, 2000.

While obscenity prosecutions have been rare to nonexistent at the U.S Justice Department, victories against pornography regularly happen on the local level.

“The good cops of Salt Lake City not only know it when they see it, they know it violates the law,” Senior Director of Legal Studies for the Family Research Council Jan LaRue told C&F Report. “Faced with all of 51 felony charges plus RICO, the defendant wisely copped out.”

PORNOGRAPHY REACHES SUBURBIA
But not all the news has been good. An article in the April 15 edition of The St. Paul Pioneer Press notes that adult businesses are moving into the strip malls around the corner from your residential neighborhoods.

“As land values have risen downtown, porn shops have basically been pushed out and have had to find secondary locations,” Michael Beyard, senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., told The Pioneer Press.

“Suburban strip malls, because of their low rent, have become favored locations,” Barbara Lukerman, a land-use planning expert and senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute, told The Pioneer Press. She added that porn shops are also seeking out cities that don’t have restrictive ordinances.

Such is the case with Intimate Treasures, an adult-oriented business that recently opened in downtown Forest Lake, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota.

“It’s been extremely upsetting,” Forest Park Mayor Ray Daninger told The Pioneer-Press. “It was a big-time surprise. We’re a family-oriented community.”

Intimate Treasures opened just as the city council was considering restrictions and new zoning rules for adult businesses. Once Intimate Treasures opened, the city immediately enacted a yearlong moratorium on future businesses of its kind.

But that has had no impact on Intimate Treasures. Neither is owner Melissa Meyer afraid of any future ordinance. “Any new ordinance wouldn’t affect me. We’re grandfathered in,” she told The Pioneer-Press.

Jan LaRue says all family-centered suburbs should take warning from the tale of Forest Park. They should move to restrict against adult-businesses before they show up at the front door.

“This illustrates well what happens when a city doesn’t have a good ordinance,” LaRue said. “It takes both a zoning and licensing ordinance and obscenity enforcement to do the job against smut-sellers,” she said.