It’s yet another home-game loss for the Mariners—and not just because they’re a shitty team, but because they’re sanctimonious prudes. The city decided this morning that a strip club may open near Safeco Field, despite opposition from the Mariners.

“The city has taken every single one of the Mariners arguments and said they are wrong,” says Peter Buck, who represented the Déjà Vu. He says he is “really tickled” about the decision.

In June, the Mariners paid $1,500 for the city to review its rules on adult cabarets in the vicinity and argued that the city should deny Déjà Vu’s permit. The team argued that the Safeco Field vicinity qualified as part of the strip-club-free zone—within 800 feet of certain kid-friendly places, according to a 2007 ordinance—in part, because it is a park and community center. But the city found that the sports stadium is, in fact, not a park but a sport stadium. “Safeco Field is not regulated as a community center under the Land Use Code, nor do the stadium or its associated facilities qualify as ‘public parks and open space,” the decision says. “If dispersion of adult cabarets from spectator sport facilities had been intended, spectator sports facilities should have been among the specified uses listed in the dispersion criteria.”

In addition, the Mariners argued that strip clubs were prohibited nearby because Safeco Field hosts tours of children. The city hit back at that argument, too, saying, Safeco Field was in operation when the city council considered and adopted the ordinance governing the location of strip clubs.

Buck expects the city to issue a permit for the Déjà Vu by next Tuesday. The Mariners will then have 21 days to appeal the decision in King County Superior Court. However, Buck says, “If we ever go to court, the city is in writing saying how they interpret the code.” The court typically rejects cases where the city has already interpreted land-use rules. In July, for example, the court rejected a challenge to the city permit for a proposed development the block on Pine Street where the Cha Cha used to be.

UPDATE, 2:45 PM: Peter Buck says the city has issued Déjà Vu’s permit.

UPDATE, 3:15 PM: Mariners Spokeswoman Rebecca Hale called back with a vacuous boilerplate statement about how the team doesn’t know what it will do next but is “studying all its options.”

25 replies on “Strip Club Allowed to Open Next to Safeco Field”

  2. Peter Buck?!? The guy from REM????

    And, um… I don’t think there should be a strip club across from Safeco Field… Call me old-fashioned……

  3. There’s little difference between the watered-down strip clubs in this state and Seattle’s venerable Coyote Ugly wannabe bar, Cowgirls, which is already next to our family-oriented sports facilities. Much ado.

  7. It makes perfect sense to me to keep sports stadiums and strip clubs in the same areas. What better place for something like Deja Vu? In a neighborhood off Highway 99?

  9. yes, there is more than one peter buck in seattle. peter buck, esq., is the best land use attorney in town. peter buck, musician, plays in a damn good band and lives here (albeit he is divorced from stephanie dorgan, erstwhile manager of the now defunct crocodile cafe) because he wants to be close to his kids. or maybe he moved. i don’t know.

  12. So let me get this right. The Mariners want to protect the moral virtues of kids, and therefore don’t want a strip club anywhere in sight of the stadium.

    Yet it is perfectly okay to sell alcohol in the stadium… right in front of the actual eyes of poor innocent vulnerable children.

    Got it.
    Booze=all you want.
    Titties=bad.

    Thank you Mariners, for being my moral compass.

  13. Is SAM not kid friendly? Or do the Mariners find art to be too boring for kids?

    The Lusty Lady is across the street and Deju Vu is a block away. They aren’t bitching.

    the end.

  15. My husband and I will surely end up at this place many times after a game.

    We have a tradition with the Lusty Lady: if we pass by and we’re smashed… we HAVE to go inside.

    I can see a new tradition beginning next baseball season with this strip club.

  17. Everyone likes strip clubs. But Seattle’s strip clubs are old and run down. Can we get $400 million in public funding plz? kthxbye.

    Fuck you, Mariners. Go to Oklahoma.

  18. I appreciate this decision in the abstract, though the specifics make it less palatable:

    1. It’s Deja Vu, which is unclassy even by strip club standards.
    2. It’s still subject to the same no alcohol rules as all the other strip joints in the city.
    3. Half the patrons will probably be vice cops.

  19. C’mon…it’ll just be another big building in SODO full of man-handled balls and sticky floors…not so different from SafeCo, really

  20. As long as the exterior of Deja Vu is porn free and there isn’t a barker outside yelling about all the hot pussy inside, I don’t have too much a problem with it. But if one is allowed next to Safeco, why aren’t there strip clubs on Broaway, the Ave, Fremont, 45th in Wallingford, etc.

  21. “…..the team doesn’t know what it will do next but is “studying all its options.””

    oklahoma city doesn’t have a baseball team yet.

  22. The difference between Richie Sexson and a stripper is that the stripper actually has to work to earn her money.

    I realize the above doesn’t make much sense, but Jesus Christ did I ever hate Richie Sexson.

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