You miss the point entirely: take a look at all of the spots where Studio 90 used to be. Take a look at the character of that neighborhood back then. Take a look at the same neighborhood today.
There's a huge difference in tollerence of Adult establishments depending on what real Estate Values are doing in that neighborhood. On Third Ave in Brooklyn, there have been streetwalkers and Peep shows forever. Recently... almost out of nowhere, the "neighborhood" folks are protesting. Why? because as Real Estate Values increase, the middle class moves: don't ask me to define that except to say it's whomever can't afford the current "prime" neighborhoods and therefore moves close to them, but into the areas previously occupied by a class lower.
Well, there used to be loads of areas which were "semi-vacant" and tollerated the existence of semi-legal activities. people who colonized Tribeca tended to be artsy types who really wouldn't call up their local whatever and try to get a Harmony Club shut down. Not quite the same for the crowd no in Tribeca, where almost all of the IMD artisits have been pushed out and replaced by affluent people spending $3 Million for lofts. Same in the West 20's, then West 30's.
And don't even get me started on Times Square.... it was one of the biggest "takings" to occur in the history of the US (after us whiteys took all of it from the natives). The redevelopment of Times Square involved one of the bigger thefts of private property in the last century. The State used the Empire State Development Corporation, and it's subsidiary the Times Square Redevelopment Corp. and condemned all the private property on 42nd Street between Broadway and 8th Aveneue (except for a few parcels conveniently left out which just happened to belong to big NY developers - like the Milstiens), and then handed the properties over to "selected" developers, for signifcantly less than those properties could have been bought for on the open market (and the losers were mostly small Real Estate holders who had held onto those properties for years while getting substantially less in rent than surrpunding areas who were waiting themselves for the next jump in the Real Estate market, but got screwed out of the opportunity to cash in on investments which they had held for, in the most part, decades).
read between the lines here to get an idea:
http://www.gowlings.com/resources/publications.asp?pubid=790
http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/condemned/
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/trends/columns/cityside/n_10215/
