Reprinted from the Chicago Tribune, Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2000
Residents of the Touhy Mobile Homes Park are not blind to the stigma society places on trailer living. But, they say, that doesn't make it right for a 24-hour adult bookstore to open across the street from a school bus stop where hundreds of children gather each day.
"There are too many kids around here to have something like that on the corner," said Joe Moody, a resident of the 548-home park in Elk Grove Township, where an estimated 1,000 children reside.
Zigzagging borders, a loophole in a zoning law and what residents call an ambivalent attitude toward "trailer people" cleared the way in January 1999 for an adult bookstore at 12521 W. Touhy Ave., before the Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals.
This week, Des Plaines is expected to file an appeal of a Cook County judge's denial of a request to reverse the zoning board's decision.
Although zoning law prohibits adult businesses from opening within 1,000 feet of residential areas, the mobile home park, like a majority in Illinois, is not zoned residential.
"These are real people who live there," said Des Plaines City Atty. David Wiltse.
"It's the use that counts; not the zoning. They still have kids."
Surrounded by Des Plaines and unincorporated Cook County, the bookstore site is within Chicago's borders on the fringe of O'Hare International Airport.
Despite its address, the bookstore will be associated with Des Plaines, officials argue, and will become the second adult business in the area. Heavenly Bodies Fantasy Sports Bar is less than a half-mile west of the mobile home park.
"That's not the type of business in any neighborhood that's going to help it in any way," said Ramon Sanchez, community coordinator for the Genesis Center, 1 N. Broadway St., Des Plaines, a health clinic that serves a majority of the park's Hispanic residents.
Sanchez said he has received dozens of phone calls and met women who are concerned about the bookstore's impact on their families.
"One of the things we've heard from mothers is, `Once that business comes up my husband's going to be tempted to go,'" Sanchez said. "What kind of example will this set for our children?"
As if to add insult to injury, a controversial billboard in Des Plaines advertising Fox television's "The Street" was removed recently, only to reappear along Touhy Avenue across from the mobile home park entrance.
Though part of the sign was blackened out due to complaints over its racy nature, "you can imagine the reaction of the residents," Wiltse said.
Residents have learned to live with airplane noise and traffic tieups along Touhy but the bookstore is something many say they can't abide. "It's discrimination is what it is," said Tom Copano, who lives and works as a maintenance employee at the park. "I just feel they're doing it over there because we're considered trailer trash."
Copano, wearing a gold necklace that reads "#1 Dad," has a 10-year-old daughter.
"My daughter's the same to me as Mayor Daley's is to him," he said. "I don't want some pervert getting hold of my daughter."
Copano helped four other male residents circulate petitions to block the bookstore last year. They collected more than 500 signatures, which are part of the court file.
Meanwhile, in the nearly two years of legal wrangling, construction of the bookstore is near completion and residents are starting to lose hope.
"I don't know how you stop something when the building is already up there," said Betty Miller, a resident.
Last week, the Des Plaines City Council appropriated $4,000 to fund the appeal. Community Consolidated School District 59, which serves about 600 of the park's children, will chip in an additional $3,000.
Anthony Musso, the bookstore's owner, owns four other adult businesses in Illinois, Wiltse said. Musso was unavailable for comment.
Des Plaines would like to reopen the zoning board hearings to present rebuttal testimony regarding a March 1993 arrest on prostitution charges at another Chicago bookstore owned by Musso, and the arrest of nine people on prostitution charges at Heavenly Bodies.
At a Jan. 15, 1999, zoning board hearing, Musso replied no when asked if he had encountered any legal problems at his other adult sites.
Though the 1993 charges did not result in any convictions, Wiltse is taking issue with Musso's response. Also at the hearing, officials were under the assumption there had been no legal troubles at Heavenly Bodies. Des Plaines officials later learned nine people had been arrested on prostitution charges there Jan. 14, 1999, the night before the hearing. Last month, Cook County Circuit Judge Thomas Durkin rejected Des Plaines' argument that the evidence should be presented to the zoning board to determine if it will influence their decision.
As bookstore foes begin to run out of options and the opening draws near, Copano has started to think about taking matters into his own hands.
"I'm to the point where I want to video every guy who walks in there and put them on the Internet," he said.
"I've got the scanner."
Moody offered to lend him his camcorder.