Indiana- The Plainfield Town Council has invoked a moratorium on new adult entertainment businesses and massage parlors after an unlicensed shop selling sex toys and offering live lingerie modeling opened on Main Street.

The Town Council reacted this week when police reported that Hot Temptations, 2316-A E. Main St., remained open despite a judge’s order to close.

“These places are vulgar, indecent, degrading and destructive to our town,” outraged town resident Roberta Fippen told the council at its meeting Monday.

“It is irritating that (taxpayers) even have to spend the dollars and go through the steps” to get court injunctions to close businesses like Hot Temptations, she added.

Indianapolis attorney Gary Selig, representing the owner of Hot Temptations, said Tuesday that he is negotiating with Plainfield attorneys to try to settle the dispute, but had no further comment.

The council took the unusual step Monday to pass all three readings of the ordinance that prohibits massage parlors, adult entertainment businesses, escort services and lingerie modeling shops from opening in town for six months, or until new laws are adopted.

The two-page ordinance imposes fines of $100 a day on such businesses that open during the moratorium.

Plainfield ordinances require adult businesses to be licensed and set other steps severely limiting the possibility for massage parlors and sex shops to open except in areas zoned industrial.

The area along Main Street, where Hot Temptations opened in early June, has commercial and residential zoning districts but not industrial.

Owners of Hot Temptations testified in a Hendricks court that they have no license to operate as an adult business and don’t believe they need one.

Town attorney Mel Daniel said current town ordinances are in effect and enforceable. The licensing and zoning ordinances were used last month to file a lawsuit against Hot Temptations, and they were upheld by a county judge.

But those ordinances are at least 10 years old, and Daniel said there have been changes in state law in the past decade, including regulations permitting and licensing legitimate therapeutic massage operations.

Other towns have amended regulations on adult businesses as sex shop operators look for loopholes and move from town to town, Plainfield officials said.

Daniel said the moratorium passed by the Plainfield council is in effect for 180 days or until the town’s adult entertainment ordinances are reviewed and possibly amended.

Plainfield officials, who said new laws likely will be more restrictive, have been receiving complaints about a couple of massage parlors, including one on Main Street in a building adjacent to Hot Temptations.

Meanwhile, a Plainfield police report this week indicates Hot Temptations was open last weekend despite a Hendricks County judge’s order to close.

Town officials confirmed late Monday that police found a neon “Open” sign lighted in front of Hot Temptations last weekend. An officer found the doors open and a clerk conducting business.

Police quoted the clerk as saying she was told by her employer the shop could be open to sell lingerie. She told police she was no longer selling adult sex items and sexually explicit videos.

Hendricks Superior Court 4 Judge Mark A. Smith issued a preliminary injunction June 24 ordering Hot Temptations owner Christopher Justin Eads, West Lafayette, to close the shop.

A hearing to make that temporary order a permanent injunction is scheduled Friday in the Hendricks Courthouse in Danville.

However Daniel wasn’t sure what would happen with the case once the judge learns the business has reopened despite the court order to close.