The question is would you name your chamber of commerce after an ice cold handjob?

Vancouver- Chilliwack only has itself to blame for the current controversy over a new strip club being located in the heart of its downtown core.

The local government, the Chilliwack Chamber of Commerce and many residents are shocked that Tony Lecce, owner of The Vault, has transformed his pub and restaurant into a strip club, or “show lounge” as he prefers to call it.

Lecce changed the focus of his legal business recently because the pub and restaurant were losing money thanks, in part, to a non-smoking bylaw in Chilliwack and his failure to get approval for the addition of a rooftop lounge.

He told Province reporter John Colebourn last week that in a recent three-month period he lost an estimated $26,000 and felt he had to bring in strippers in order to avoid bankruptcy.

While there are no bylaws in Chilliwack outlawing strip clubs, Chamber of Commerce chief executive officer Sue Attrill tells us the city has gone to great lengths to make its downtown core a place for families.

“Everything he [Lecce] is doing flies in the face of that,” Attrill says.

For his part, Lecce says the changes he has made have been done in good taste and that his staff makes sure that patrons behave themselves. There is, for example, no lap dancing nor any other physical contact with the dancers.

He also says he’s collected more than 1,400 signatures on a petition supporting his successful introduction of strippers, whom he describes as “the most professional and best ladies in the industry.”

And if Chilliwack council thinks it can merely create a new bylaw banning strip clubs, it had better think again. Legal experts in municipal law who have commented on this story say that would be very difficult to do, and even if the city succeeded, The Vault would be “grandfathered” and immune from any new bylaw since it’s already in business.

Regardless, the City of Chilliwack’s staff is now looking at any options it may have to stop the strip club from continuing to operate.

But if the good people of Chilliwack had been a little more accommodating when Lecce was trying to make changes to boost his business earlier, chances are there wouldn’t be a G-string to be found anywhere in its downtown core today.