Le Sex Shoppe Ordered to Leave Studio City Site

A controversial Studio City sex shop was ordered Friday to close after a city hearing officer said that showing movies such as “Crocodile Dundee” along with hard-core films did not convert the shop into a family entertainment center.

Le Sex Shoppe at 12323 Ventura Blvd. is believed to be at least the fifth adult business ordered to move this year since the city of Los Angeles began enforcing an ordinance designed to shut down massage parlors and sex arcades near residential areas. At least seven other businesses, including three other Le Sex Shoppe outlets, have won extensions of their permits to 1991, city records show.

The ordinance requires sexually oriented businesses to move if they are closer than 500 feet to homes unless the operators can show financial hardship or they hold long-term leases.

Although the Studio City shop holds a lease, Associate Zoning Administrator William Lillenberg ruled after a hearing Friday that it cannot stay because it violates a regulation against more than one adult business operating under one roof.

The two businesses are a book store and a video arcade, Lillenberg said.

Programming Changed

An attorney for the Studio City shop, David M. Brown, testified at the hearing that the operators recently changed programming so that five of the store’s eight video booths can show general-interest features. This change means that there is only one adult business at the location--a book store, Brown said.

Lillenberg said he visited the shop recently. “I told David Brown that even though they had changed operations, they were still adult,” he said.

“Anybody who goes in there, are they going to choose Bambi?” asked Polly Ward, president of the Studio City Residents Assn. “It’s so transparent.”

Residents have shown up in force at each hearing on the Studio City shop’s application for an extension, many denouncing the business as a magnet to prostitution and other crimes.

Operators of the shop can appeal to the Board of Zoning Appeals and, if unsuccessful, to the City Council.

Of the four Le Sex Shoppe cases he has handled, Lillenberg said he has approved extension requests of three, including one last month in Sherman Oaks. The others were allowed to continue operating because they had been in operation at least a decade.