Downtown facelift mixes strip clubs and swank

When Déjà Vu opens another strip club downtown later this year -- right by the federal courthouse and the swanky new Metropolitan Tower condos -- it won't be the only strange bedfellow in town.

On the other side of downtown from where naked women will give lap dances down the street from seated juries, the Four Seasons hotel and condominiums will open next to Seattle's legendary strip club: the Lusty Lady.

In one, luxury; next door, men leering through a window at naked women.

But recently, neither Lusty clients nor the hotel developers seemed concerned about getting along. And on the other side of downtown, the idea of having Déjà Vu as a new neighbor wasn't causing much alarm either.

"It's another amenity," joked developer Al Clise, who is building offices across the street from the future Déjà Vu at Seventh and Westlake avenues.

Could a city that banned new strip clubs for almost two decades and tried to outlaw lap dances two years ago be coming to grips with naked dancing women?

"It's gnarly in there," said a man leaving the Lusty Lady recently. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, he said.

There have been a lot of things on First Avenue that don't fit the downtown's gleaming upscale image, such as the pawnshop, the gun store.

"I guess it's good for the city to see things get cleaned up," he said. "But it's nice to see the Lusty Lady still here."

He couldn't see the Lusty Lady putting on appearances for the tony new neighbor next door.

"I don't think they're going to start catering to the yuppies and serving espresso or something."

When the Seattle Art Museum's Annex opened next door, the Lusty Lady welcomed it; one side of its famous marquis said, "Welcome SAM."

The other said, "There goes the neighborhood," museum spokeswoman Cara Egan said.

A dancer at the club said earlier this month that there hasn't been much talk of the Four Seasons changing things. The dancers don't work for tips, said the woman, who didn't want her name used, so more money in the wallets of clients coming to gawk wouldn't necessarily matter. Maybe more tourists, she said, then, "I have to go to work now." A few minutes later, she was dancing naked.

Despite the strip club next door, the Seattle Hotel Group, which is building the Four Seasons, went ahead. It's right downtown, and across the street from the Seattle Art Museum, said Paul Zumwalt, a representative for the developer. And groups still are reserving rooms; people still are buying the million-dollar condos.

And maybe the city's attitudes are changing. After all, Seattle's voters two years ago overwhelmingly repealed a ban on lap dances. A 180-day ban on new clubs imposed by the city after a number of strip clubs opened in the late 1980s was struck down in 1995 as a violation of free speech.

City Council members in June approved new regulations, allowing them anywhere in the city as long as they are more than 800 feet from community centers, schools, day cares and parks. They must also be at least 600 feet from another strip club.

Since then, strip-club owners have called about possible new ones and two more, including the Déjà Vu, are close to opening, said Alan Justad, spokesman for the city's building department. The other would be at Fantasy Unlimited -- a business at Westlake Avenue near Virginia Street with a sex boutique and strip shows.

The city received another application last summer to open a club in Sodo, but a state law banning alcohol in strip clubs probably will limit the number of new ones, he said.

Calls to Déjà Vu and to Bentall Capitol US, which owns the Metropolitan Towers, a condo complex about a block from the future Déjà Vu, were not returned.

But Mark Wasson, who lives in the Metropolitan Tower, didn't seem to care a strip club was moving in.

"It's all just part of living in the city," he said.

Allowing more strip clubs hasn't caused the outrage he expected, City Councilman Nick Licata said. "I was thinking that if they were opening nightclubs, people would be upset ... we haven't heard about problems outside strip clubs as with nightclubs. And people have a laissez-faire attitude about what goes on inside."

Former Councilman Peter Steinbrueck attributes the city's shift in attitudes to changing demographics. "The city has gotten younger, with more single people," he said.

If not for new laws requiring some distance between strip clubs, people might be more upset, Councilwoman Jan Drago said. Still, "there's been a lot that's changed in the last 20 years," she said.

Clise said he's not concerned. "It's a city. It's part of the fabric of urban life. Most cities have these things."

The club shouldn't get very out of hand, he said. "It's going to be right by the West (Police) Precinct."