BLUEFIELD, Va. — Pornographic bookstores and other adult businesses will have no place in Bluefield, Va., town limits if new specifications and restrictions are enacted.

The Bluefield, Va., Town Council and the Bluefield, Va., Planning Commission held a joint public hearing Monday for changes in the town code that would define and restrict adult-oriented businesses such as pornographic movie houses.

Under the current town code, such establishments could enter town limits.

“It was something that had fallen through the cracks,” said Mayor Jimmy Jones. “There was not an ordinance that said they cannot do that.”

Under the additions being suggested by the planning commission, an adult business could not be within 1,500 feet of a residential district, school or church, said Zoning Administrator Cody Musick. An adult business would also have to be within a business district, but the ones currently within the town still would not meet the amended code’s requirements, he said.

“Currently there’s no property in town that would meet all the requirements,” Musick said.

The changes would also address conditional use permits for tattoo parlors, fortunetellers, massage parlors and methadone clinics, Musick said. Public hearings would conducted before such businesses could enter the town.

Members of the planning commission will meet Feb. 4 to make recommendations that the town council will consider on Feb. 11.

One town resident, Kelly Sawyers, spoke during the hearing.

“This is absolutely, positively bad for our community,” she said. Referring to a previous hearing in which Virginia Avenue residents presented a petition with about 50 signatures to protest a permit for a timber management office on their street, she said, “If people are this upset about a timber business, imagine an adult bookstore.”



Greg Jordan writes for the Bluefield (W.Va.) Daily Telegraph.