Sumter County, Florida

Sumter County Sexually Oriented Business Study and Ordinance
   

For Sumter County, a relatively rural county with a population of about 53,000, Duncan Assoicates provided a sexually oriented business study and regulations. The county seat is Bushnell, with a population of about 2,000. The county lies between the booming Orlando area (about 35 miles east) and the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area, about an equal distance west. It also lies along Interstate 75, which has long been an artery for sexually oriented businesses.

When the XMart chain opened an establishment at an I-75 exit outside Wildwood in 2004, the County realized that it lacked regulations to address the issue of where sexually oriented businesses could locate in the future. It hired the firm to study the issue and to make regulatory recommendations. Duncan Associates completed a study of local issues and of possible locations for sexually oriented businesses in the County in early 2005. The firm then worked with County staff to prepare draft amendments to the County zoning ordinance to implement the recommendations.
Those recommendations would:
• Limit future sex businesses to industrial zones in the County;
• Require that such businesses be separated by several hundred feet from schools, religious institutions and residential areas; and
• Ban future video viewing booths and unlicensed massage parlors.
Duncan Associates also worked with the County to ensure that the proposed regulations would meet Constitutional requirements by providing an administrative permitting process with a clear route for appeals, and by ensuring that the resulting regulations would leave “adequate alternative avenues” for activities protected by the First Amendment.

Period:    January 2005 - February 2005               Contact:    Robbie Rogers, Development Director
Team:      Duncan Associates                                       352.793.0270