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PASSIONS OWNER OPTOMISTIC ABOUT CITY COUNCIL LIFTING RESTRICTIONS ON ZONING
By: Keith Witchka, Staff Writer - 06-28-10 - 11:00 a.m. PDT
Email Keith@JRLChartsonline.com
Photo courtesy of Faye Wheeler
Passions Adult Video Store David Rabbett, is optomistic about a new proposal by the city council to lift restrictions on Adult Video Store locations.Yes, they would be allowed to open a retail location outside of the standard industrial zoning area. Adult Video stores are coming to main street in Dubbo and if the proposed planning law changes come into effect.
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Passions owner David Rabbett will be welcomed in the downtown district. This is the first Dubbo City Council's draft on a local environment plan that would remove restrictions on where sex shops can trade.
Rabbett, who had a long-running dispute with Dubbo City Council about the location of his “adult shop” back in 2005 and 2006, said the draft plan was a sign that “Dubbo might be growing up and the Bible belt might be losing its way”, but earlier comments by Dubbo mayor Allan Smith indicate he did not agree. Cr Smith was strongly opposed to the NSW Department of their plan's to alter restricted premises and other planning provisions in the document councilors approved back in August of 2009.
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“There’s been a fairly substantial movement in the community to not have sex shops within the CBD or neighborhood shopping areas or other residential areas,” he said. A department spokesman said it needed to be recognized that restricted premises were legal land-uses in NSW and yesterday Mr Rabbett’s response to the changes was “I told you so”.
Four years on from opening a sex shop in an industrial zone near the Dubbo Presbyterian Church after taking the council to the Land and Environment Court, he spoke of benefits to the city if planning laws on restricted premises were relaxed.“It’s a great idea to have adult shops open up in more districts", he said. It would mean new businesses for Dubbo and they could fit into the local economy, he said. “If the local environment plan is changed, we’ll be moving our business,” he said. Mr Rabbett was not worried about increased competition.
“There’d be more chance of five or 10 McDonalds opening in Dubbo, I don’t think we’re going to get that many,” he said. “I don’t think one will open up on every corner, it’s not the (Kings) Cross.”
Despite his hope that Dubbo may have “grown up”, Mr Rabbett still expects some local objections to the draft plan.
“I’d expect some opposition to it, but if you take into account how Passions has performed, there have been no problems to the community or the church,” he said. “We’ve proved that particular business can coincide with others.” Attempts by the Daily Liberal to contact a representative from the Presbyterian church failed yesterday.
