Mendon fights 2d strip-club plan

Tiny community tries to fend off developers

A strip club has been proposed for a 3.4-acre site in Mendon that is currently home to Oak Tree Supply. (Christine Hochkeppel for The Boston Globe)

MENDON - Most people in town still draw their water from wells. The police force is just 13 officers strong. And life in Mendon, population 5,767, is generally quiet, especially after dark. In the whole town, there are just two stoplights.

But for the second time this summer, this tiny bedroom community, just outside Interstate 495 in the western suburbs, is gearing up to fight a proposed strip club on the town's main drag, Route 16.

Such proposals have long dogged residents in Massachusetts, where courts have ruled that nude dancing is a protected form of free expression. But the nude dancing issue has recently been causing a particular furor in the western suburbs, where proposals have sparked protest, outrage, and legal challenges.

About 1,300 people in Milford signed a petition last spring opposing a proposed strip club, and town officials ultimately rejected it. But an appeal is pending. Rattled residents in nearby towns, worried about what was hap pening in Milford, moved quickly to examine laws on the books, or enact them for the first time, to make sure they had districts established restricting where such businesses could be built.

"The activity in Milford certainly put it on everybody's radar screen," said Dale Pleau, Mendon's town coordinator. "And at that point, the Board of Selectmen was concerned that if for whatever reason it failed in Milford, the town's commercial district - Mendon's commercial district - was vulnerable to having an adult entertainment application come in."

In May, reacting in part to what happened in Milford, Mendon established a small adult entertainment district on Route 16, less than a mile from the town center, near the drive-in movie theater. For the first time, Mendon officials had a law that allowed them to regulate where strip clubs could or could not set up business in town.

But all the talk about restricting nude dancing has seemed to have the opposite effect. Within weeks, Mendon town officials received two proposals from local business owners, wanting to open strip clubs. The first was denied earlier this month, because the business was located just outside the adult entertainment district. But with the second application, filed by George Funari on July 15, things are "much more complicated," said David Breen, chairman of Mendon's Board of Selectmen. Officials, he said, will only be able to oppose the proposal if they believe it will lead to "disruptive conduct," or "unreasonable" increases in noise or traffic.

Funari, who did not return multiple calls seeking comment for this report, has proposed a strip club that is large - with an 8,900-square-foot layout, 164-seat bar, 80-seat dining room, and stages for dancers on two floors - and is within the adult entertainment district established just months ago. Undeterred, some residents have organized to fight the proposal.

"My fear is Mendon will become known as the town with the great big strip club, whereas, now, nobody knows about Mendon," said Sharron Luttrell, a mother of two who has lived in town since 1991. "A city can absorb it. A city is not going to be defined by it. But Mendon's so small that it's going to be defined by it. That's my fear."

The 3.4-acre site where Funari would like to build his strip club is currently home to Oak Tree Supply, a landscaping business that sells everything from red cedar mulch to hanging flower baskets. Under Funari's proposal, he would tear down the existing business, which he owns, and build the club from the ground up. The company name: Showtime Entertainment.

Because of the extent of the proposal, Breen said, Funari will have to do more than just persuade the Board of Selectmen to give him an adult entertainment license at a town meeting on Sept. 15. The applicant, Breen said, will also have to receive a special permit from the zoning board of appeals and approval from the planning board before he could start building the new club.

Town officials, preparing for a deluge of people at the town meeting, recently announced that they will hold it in an elementary school gymnasium, instead of the town hall. Deb Lane, one of the co-founders of the opposition group, Speak Out Mendon, said organizers hope to fill the gym with opponents. The town is expecting roughly 300 people. And if the hearing for the first strip club proposal this summer is any guide, there is sure to be some booing and shouting.

In the meantime, parents in Mendon are having conversations with their children about what is (or isn't) happening in town. In one recent discussion, Nancy Macari said her 13-year-old daughter asked what adult entertainment was, and Macari, in turn, asked her what she thought it was.

"Kind of out of the mouths of babes, she said, 'It's karaoke, isn't it?' "

Macari, a mother of two, had no choice, she said, but to explain to her daughter what the phrase really means.

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.