An era has passed in Jefferson County – almost unnoticed, but it has indeed passed.
With the closure earlier this year of Club Imperial, the county no longer has a venue for “live adult entertainment.”
Club Imperial, which officials said featured women dancing in bikinis, was one of seven adults-only businesses located in unincorporated Jefferson County in April 2003, when the County Commission (the forerunner to the County Council) passed the Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance to regulate such establishments.
Club Imperial was the only one that provided live entertainment, officials said.
Thirteen years later, only one of those seven businesses is still open – Rental Entertainment Center, a video rental store in Fenton.
Two other adult-oriented businesses in the county operate in municipalities – Rodao Drive, another video rental store in Arnold, and Pure Pleasure, which advertises itself as a “boutique,” in Pevely. Both are subject to municipal ordinances rather than the county’s standards.
“Prior to 2003, there were no (county) restrictions or regulations concerning the operation of sexually oriented businesses,” said Dennis Kehm Jr., now the county’s zoning and code compliance officer. As assistant county counselor, Kehm helped draft the 39-page Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance.
The businesses that existed when the ordinance took effect were allowed to continue, but they gradually died out, and no new ones have been proposed for unincorporated areas of the county since.
“While it’s taken a while, you can see the results,” said Patrick Lamping, one of the three county commissioners who passed the ordinance in 2003 and now executive director of the Jefferson County Economic Development Corporation.
It’s difficult to tell when Club Imperial, which was located at 4328 Jeffco Blvd. south of Arnold, actually shut down.
Officials with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office couldn’t provide information on when they stopped checking on the place, and county and state officials said they can’t disclose when it stopped paying sales tax.
According to state business license information, Club Imperial was owned by a corporation whose president was Sheila DeClue, who listed her address as the club.
The business did not pay the $4,794 owed to the county for real estate taxes in 2015, according to county tax records.
DeClue could not be reached for comment.
County Councilman Bob Boyer (District 3, Arnold), whose district includes the site, said he doesn’t know when Club Imperial might have closed.
“I can tell you they weren’t around in May or June,” Boyer said.
He said he noticed the business was no longer in business when he was in the area, helping a nonprofit group find real estate for a transitional housing site.
County Executive Ken Waller said he couldn’t pinpoint a date, either.
“But I’m not disappointed they’re gone,” he said.
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Lt. Gary Higginbotham said for the most part, Club Imperial did not pose a problem.
“I wouldn’t say we got a lot of calls for criminal activity from there,” he said. “Of course, like any other drinking establishment, there was the occasional disturbance, but nothing out of the ordinary other than the one incident.”
In 2009, an Imperial man, Matthew Crumly, then 34, was shot to death on the Club Imperial parking lot. A Jefferson County jury convicted a St. Louis County man, Todd Meine, of first-degree murder and armed criminal action and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Higginbotham said the Sheriff’s Office visited Club Imperial periodically.
“We do regular bar checks, where officers visit and look around and check for underage drinking, that sort of thing,” he said. “It’s more of a deterrence, and we never found nor did we get any reports of that establishment being in violation.”
Arnold Police Chief Bob Shockey said the presence of Club Imperial so close to his city wasn’t an issue.
“Once in a blue moon – and I mean maybe once every two or three years – we’d be called to assist by the Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “I don’t remember the last time we got a call.”
Shockey said Rodao Drive also exists peacefully. “It’s quiet. We don’t get any calls there,” he said.
Higginbotham said the same of Rental Entertainment Center.
County passed
restrictions in 2003
Things might have been different without the passage of the Sexually Oriented Business Ordinance, officials said.
“The county was treating those kinds of businesses the same way they were any other business,” Kehm said. “There were no restrictions on locations, their hours of operation, how close they could be to schools or churches, or what ‘services’ they could provide.”
Lamping said restrictions were needed. “We held three public hearings on sexually oriented businesses during 2002 and 2003, when we decided we needed to take a look at those kind of businesses in Jefferson County,” he said. “During those hearings, we heard from police, from the operators of the businesses and from citizens.
“We also heard from the Health Department, which told us that they believed these types of businesses may be linked to an inordinately larger number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases. We heard some things that were very uncomfortable.
“Based on that information, the commission determined that we would look at what the county’s options were under the constitutional allowances of public health and safety, and we did that. We determined that the best course of action was to make it a land-value decision (tying restrictions into zoning categories).”
Kehm said the ordinance took a long time to draft.
“It took a lot of research and the better part of a year to draft it, if not longer,” he said. “We had to balance the First Amendment rights given to certain aspects of those businesses with the health and welfare of the public. It was very challenging for a lot of reasons.”
No challenges to
county regulations
Kehm said the work he and others put in to draw up the 2003 standards have paid off. “In all those years, there’s never been a challenge even filed against it,” he said. “The intent of the ordinance was not necessarily to put them out of business; all but one of them just slowly went away for probably a number of reasons. But I think that the ordinance did help protect the health and safety of the county, and that was the aim of it.”
Lamping said time has proved that the County Commission took the correct course. “Of all the things I did – all the things we did – I’m proudest of what happened here,” he said, “because we were able to effectively address a public health and safety issue without raising taxes, without engaging in open-speech issues and without having to go to the Legislature and requesting additional powers. We used the powers given to first-class noncharter counties at the time and did it effectively.”
Current county officials say the ordinance probably didn’t have much to do with Club Imperial no longer being around.
“It would be great to say that county regulations had a part in that,” said Eric Larson, county services director, “but it’s probably the market that ultimately played a bigger role.”