Facing a sign in the audience reading “Planet K — Go Away,” Bee Cave Planning and Zoning and City Council members defined adult novelty stores and added them to the list of conditional uses accepted in the city’s commercial districts at two meetings April 26.

The city also clarified what it considers a major business and primary business purpose.

Planet K owner Michael Kleinman applied for a building permit to open his business at the former Trading Post restaurant on Texas 71 in the city’s Town Center district, but Bee Cave City Administrator Frank Salvato said the permit application did not provide enough information for him to determine the building’s use, so he ruled it did not fit within allowed uses in the Town Center.

Planning and Zoning and City Council members voted to classify an adult novelty store as a sexually oriented business.

Adult novelty stores are not necessarily sexually oriented businesses, but city officials said they believe adult novelty stores generate similar negative secondary effects of reduced property values and increased crime.

Spicewood resident Mike Helrung said his family lived about one mile away from where Planet K opened at Interstate 35 and Rundberg in Austin.

“That is now the highest crime area in the city of Austin. Prostitution, drugs, crime, thievery, drug sales — It got to the point where we would go out of our way to not cross that intersection,” Helrung said. “I would venture to say that if Planet K starts doing business at this intersection [in Bee Cave], you are going to see a very different community very soon.”

On Tuesday, Kleinman questioned the veracity of Helrung’s statements.

“We didn’t cause any crime. He can’t prove that,” said Kleinman, who attended the April 26 meeting but did not speak at them. “We help stop crime; we don’t cause crime.”

Bee Cave resident Joe Lamendola questioned what the unintended consequences of the city’s actions could be.

“My concern is that by amending [ordinances] we are actually opening up a new category of business and would tend to attract that type of business here,” Lamendola said. “I think we have to be careful about doing the exact opposite of what we want to do here.”

Bee Cave resident Pamela Gosch said she didn’t want to see the city’s identity morph into a variant of Austin’s.

“While we appreciate keeping Austin weird, we’d like to keep Bee Cave normal,” Gosch said. “They can do this business everywhere, but please don’t bring it into our neighborhood.”

Planning and Zoning Vice Chair Michele Bliss told the audience that cities’ zoning ordinances cannot zone a business out, or effectively block a legal business from operating.

Her explanation elicited a chorus of “why?” from several audience members.

In response, an attorney in the audience later cited the 14th Amendment, which states, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Kleinman criticized speakers for unfairly targeting his business.

“I was pretty dismayed at the lack of understanding of the free enterprise system and the democratic system we live under,” he said Tuesday. “It’s so anti-American and so anti-Texan what’s going on out there right now [in Bee Cave]. I find it very depressing and distressing that a population can be so ignorant of the principles upon which this country was founded.”

He also doubted that those who are opposing his business have entered a Planet K store.

“Why are they making judgments about things when they haven’t even been there to see what they are judging?” Kleinman asked.

Planning and Zoning Chair Terri Wood said the city would continue to address the issue.

“This is not the final step in what we are doing here,” Wood said.

Council member Mike Murphy told the audience that the city is preparing itself for an anticipated legal battle but it is limited in its actions.

“You can’t just ban things you don’t like and would not like to have,” Murphy said. “It is an attempt — I think a good attempt — to once again hone our laws to fit what is happening. We are going to be probably legally going to be attacked on that. Part of this is to strengthen our laws not only for today but for the future wars to come.”

The city also is seeking a restraining order to block Planet K from applying a mural to its building. Bee Cave’s ordinances prohibit murals on buildings that face public streets.

“We are trying to keep our community clean,” commissioner Jerry Phillips said.