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18 Planning February 1999 A N N N I C Out of Business in Boston If Homer Russell goes down in planning history, it may be because he was the planner who created Boston's Combat Zone. In 1974, early in his career at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Russell was asked to draw the tightest possible boundaries around existing adult entertainment businesses. Russell spent weeks mapping every nook—an eye-opening experience, he says. 'In one really small place, I discovered a back room. It turned out to be enormous and had the most S&M equipment I've ever seen in my life,' he recalls. Russell mapped what became known as the Boston model for clustering adult movies, bookstores, and strip joints. Today, though, Boston's red light district is little more than lines on a zoning map. Only a nude dancing bar and a handful of adult bookstores and peep shows remain. Asian restaurants, government offices, and parking lots have chopped the zone into almost unrecognizable pieces. Lower Washington Street's fate as Boston's adult en tertainment district was sealed in the 1960s, when urban renewal demolished the Scollay Square burlesque houses to make way for Government Center. The area was officially designated as the city's adult entertainment district in 1974 and reached its peak (or some might say depth) two years later, when 30 peep shows, adult movie theaters, and strip clubs dominated the six-block area of downtown Boston. At first, Russell recalls the area as a tourist draw- seedy, but still vibrant. The military presence (which led to the nickname 'Combat Zone') kept the area relatively safe. 'There were more MPs [military police] per capita than anywhere,' Russell says. That started to change as the nearby military bases closed. In 1976, calls to clean up the district grew after the stabbing death of Harvard University football captain Andrew Puopolo, who was celebrating with teammates in the Combat Zone. But other than increasing polic. patrols and cracking down on drugs and prostitution, there was little the city could do. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that these businesses had to be accommodated somewhere in the city, and no other neighborhood would take them. Slowly the Combat Zone did decline, but its downfall had little to do with the political wishes of Boston leaders. Russell says it was 'a combination of AIDS, the proliferation of X-rated videos, and the lack of parking' that killed the zone. Once the X-rated businesses were gone, Boston's lead ers took steps to prevent their return. In 1993, the city bought the historic China Trade Center to keep it out of the hands of pornography merchants. The city helped engineer the sale of another building to a Chinatown businessman and a preservation group and applauded when the state opened a motor vehicle office in the area last year. Finally, the city paved the way for a landlord to bulldoze two buildings containing the X-rated Pilgrim Theater and the Naked i strip bar. The landlord, a local parking lot magnate, maintains he could not find a suitable tenant for the dilapidated structures. He had the support of residents in Chinatown, which borders the Combat Zone. But Boston preserva tionists opposed the demolitions and appealed to city hall to save the buildings. In his zeal to eliminate the red light district, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, known for aiding other preservation efforts, allowed the demoli tions to proceed. The new parking lots went up in 1996. Boston has had to fight three battles in three years against more adult entertainment. In 1996, the city pressured a building owner to reject an upscale strip club as a tenant. A year later, the city denied an entertain ment license to another company because a man linked to the organization had been convicted of tax evasion. Finally, late last year, the city rejected an application from a third firm to bring another nude dancing club to downtown Boston. Ultimately, the real estate market will probably be the biggest factor in keeping the Combat Zone clean, accord ing to Homer Russell, who is now the Boston Redevelop ment Authority's director of urban design. Businesses from nearby Chinatown are spilling over into the store fronts vacated by peep shows and adult bookstores. Emerson College has bought and renovated several neigh boring buildings. And Millennium Partners of New York has started construction on a $400 million complex that will include shops, apartments, a new cinema, and a 300- room hotel. Russell predicts that 'over the next couple of real estate cycles, there will be no room for adult estab lishments.' George Homsy George Homsy is a freelance writer and radio producer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.