"That store was doing no one any harm," he said. "It's a major highway there. Let the marketplace operate."
The key to the store's reconfiguration lies in the basement. By storing stacks of ordinary used paperback books and other items there and along the first-floor entrance, the 24-hours-a-day operation does not qualify as an adult bookstore under county zoning law.
Using the basement allows the store to rise above the legal criteria that define an adult book or video store as a public store "where at least 20 percent of the stock" is sexual material, and where at "least 20 percent of the total usable floor area" is devoted to sex items.
"They hadn't used the basement before," said Louis P. Ruzzi, the senior assistant county solicitor who has spent years trying to use zoning laws to get the courts to order the store to move or close.
The store isn't in full compliance, Ruzzi said. But if it dedicates about another 30 square feet of floor space to nonsexual items, the shop probably would be legal, pending a reinspection, he said. If it does, the carefully crafted county law would no longer apply.
"It's very typical of the industry to use the law to circumvent the people's will," said Darrell Drown, a former County Council member who helped draft the first law regulating adult bookstores.
The saga began in early 1997 when the Pack Shack opened. By June of that year, the store was attracting demonstrators in the U.S. 40 median.
By year's end, the council passed zoning legislation that barred adults stores within 500 feet of schools, churches, parks or homes. That restricted stores to less than 1 percent of land in the county in a handful of remote locations. Existing businesses had one year to move. Since it was about 165 feet from an apartment complex, Pack Shack's days appeared to be numbered.
But Schulman fought back, contending that the restrictions were so tight that the law was unconstitutional. The Maryland Court of Appeals agreed.
County officials rewrote the law in 2004, decreasing the distance requirement to 300 feet. Last year, a hearing examiner ruled that the store had violated that law because it had not applied for an adult bookstore license, was 165 feet from nearby apartments, and featured video viewing booths with doors that "render them invisible from customers and employees."
The case seemed on a long legal track back to the Court of Appeals - until now.
"It's been our position all along that they were in compliance" with county law, Schulman said. "We're close to having an agreement that we're in compliance."
larry.carson@baltsun.com
