Council ponders sex in the city

By WAYNE THOMPSON

The owner of The White House on Queen St, Brian Le Gros is worried his $5 million strip club and massage parlour will be forced to close by Auckland City Council moves to control the sex industry.

The White House is next to the Kinz in the Park child care centre in the Myers Park Kindergarten building.

Mr Le Gros said his business was caught up in a proposed council bylaw that would ban strip clubs, massage parlours and brothels within 250m of pre schools, schools and homes.

"I feel like the target - I'm probably the only one who is hit by this," Mr Le Gros said yesterday.

"I'm unlucky and I'm going to bear the brunt of this, because I'm right next to a kindergarten."

He has operated the White House for nearly two years and converted the club from the former Theosophical Society hall after gaining council resource consent for an entertainment facility.

"I have done the council a favour - I spent $5 million making a rat-infested old building into something that is really beautiful. And now I have to go.

"Everyone who comes here loves it. I'm getting compliments from everyone."

Mr Le Gros said The White House employed "10 bar managers and bar staff, 40 working girls and 16 dancers - and paid a lot of tax."

He said the draft bylaw would drive sex businesses out of town.

"But they should be in town. This is the place for them ... not stuck in some house out in the suburbs.

"The council wants to clean up the town and make the suburbs messy.'

Mr Le Gros said he had "gone past the buzz" of The White House and now had other clubs in Noumea and Tahiti to fall back on.

But he was concerned that the bylaw would ruin a business that was well run and drug-free.

Tanya Harvey, who is the licensee of the Auckland Kindergarten Association , which runs the child care centre in Myers Kindergarten building, said The White House had not been a troublesome neighbour.

Mrs Harvey said Mr Le Gros had improved the safety of the kindergarten building and park by installing security lighting, having nightly patrols and cleaning up graffiti.

The White House's other neighbour is the Salvation Army.

Major Ross Gower, who is the divisional commander for the northern region, said the Army had opposed the setting up of the massage parlour and its seven-day liquor licence.

He said the White House had presented "minor difficulties" during its time as a neighbour, but he did not want to elaborate. The staff had tried to be courteous neighbours and he respected them for that.

But, he would be delighted if the White House or any such business stopped operating.

"Our concern as always, is for the people who for whatever reasons are caught up in prostitution,"said Major Wilson.

The draft bylaw allows existing brothels that do not comply with the new location rules to stay where they are until June 30 next year.

The chairman of the city development committee promoting the bylaw, councillor Juliet Yates, said the council was not taking an extreme line with the sex industry.

She said people should note that until the Prostitution Reform Act was passed there were no brothels operating legally so operators could not claim they had a right to carry on.

She said the bylaw would not drive the sex industry out to the suburbs because brothels were banned there "and the suburbs don't want them".

Kate Dickie, of the Prostitute's Collective, said the draft bylaw would be opposed by the industry.

"This is pushing the industry back underground and into unsafe conditions for workers once again. It undoes any good that we have achieved with the Prostitution Reform Act."

Squeeze on brothels

* The Auckland City Council wants to contain the sex industry in specific parts of the city.

* A new draft bylaw bans sex industry premises within 250m of pre-schools, schools and homes.

* Existing enterprises have until June 30 next year to comply.