The Chateau
- Bondage Parlor Has Neighbors Complaining
- Van Nuys: The Club Chateau, forced out of Hollywood, provides ‘submission and dominance’ sessions with women employees. Zoning is questioned.
- By JOCELYN Y. STEWART AND MICHAEL CONNELLY
- JULY 27, 1991 12 AM
- TIMES STAFF WRITERS
A club catering to the fantasies of sadists and masochists that was forced out of Hollywood by zoning regulations has quietly set up shop in Van Nuys, sparking complaints from a neighboring religious group, police and local officials.
The Club Chateau, where male patrons pay for “submission and dominance” sessions with women employees that can include being bound with chains and whipped, moved to 7310 Atoll Ave. in March, after city officials determined that it violated the adult entertainment ordinance at its previous location, club owner James D. Hillier said this week.
Although now situated in an area of the city where sexual encounter establishments are not prohibited, local authorities and neighboring businesses are complaining. At a hearing this week on the issuance of a city conditional-use permit, a representative of Councilman Joel Wachs voiced opposition to the club moving to Van Nuys.
“It’s located very near a mobile home park and it’s located near a religious organization,” said Tom Henry, Wach’s planning deputy, saying that sexual encounter establishments are not allowed within 500 feet of a residence or a church. It was that ordinance that forced the Club Chateau to move from Hollywood, because it was too close to a residential area.
A petition has been submitted to Wachs signed by 50 members of the Living Word, a religious organization with publishing offices directly across from the Club Chateau, Henry said.
Hillier countered that if the Living Word office is considered a church, it would be in violation of zoning laws itself because the area is not zoned for churches. The trailer park is on another block, remote from the Club Chateau, which is on a dead-end street, he said.
Sgt. Ron Marbrey of the Van Nuys Division vice unit also voiced opposition to the club at the hearing.
“The whole operation we feel can only have a negative impact on the community,” he said. “We have received several calls from members of the community. There is a lot of concern.”
Vice officers have visited the Club Chateau often since it opened and “there hasn’t been any problems,” Marbrey said.
Zoning Administrator Andrew Sincosky took Hillier’s request under advisement and is expected to issue a ruling in a few weeks.
Hillier called the complaints unfounded. “It’s harassment,” he said. “I am doing nothing illegal, nothing wrong, by being here. We are doing everything the law requires.”
City officials see things differently.
Although the city has not issued a permit to the Club Chateau, the bondage parlor has been operating since March in a building that formerly housed the Barbara Ann Bakery in a mostly industrial neighborhood north of Sherman Way, Hillier said.
It is not uncommon for businesses to open without proper permits, “especially if it’s an already existing building,” said Jim Carney, chief inspector for the Bureau of Community Safety, an arm of the Department of Building and Safety.
“They just go ahead and open for business and nobody gets notified until somebody complains,” Carney said. He said his agency has had no contact with the club.
Van Nuys vice officers recently informed Hillier that Club Chateau was also operating without the required live entertainment and massage parlor permits from the city Police Commission. The club needs the massage permit because customers are touched by employees while being tied up, chained and in some cases whipped, police said.
Hillier said he was unaware that the massage and entertainment permits were needed, Marbrey said, and will be given about a week to make the application before police take action. In a letter to Sincosky, Hillier argued that he has never previously been required to have a massage parlor permit.
The club, which bills itself as one of the world’s renowned houses of bondage and domination with 4,000 members, has operated in various sites around Los Angeles for 15 years, Hillier said. Protests against its presence are nothing new.
In 1985, Hillier was forced to move--also because the club was in a residential area--from the 500 block of North San Vicente Boulevard in West Hollywood after neighbors complained of hearing whippings, screams and anguished moans. Residents also argued that it attracted “undesirables to the neighborhood.”
In December, the Guardian Angels picketed the club--then at 5325 Sunset Blvd.--night and day for a week, saying it was a source of prostitution and drug use.
Hillier was granted a temporary restraining order limiting the number of pickets to seven, and he said he filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking unspecified damages from the Guardian Angels.
Hillier vehemently denies accusations that the club is a source of illegal conduct. He says that no sexual acts take place there, that he routinely checks his employees for drug use and that there has never been a prostitution arrest on any of the premises.
“The minute you use the words ‘sexual encounter,’ people think prostitution,” Hillier said, sighing in exasperation. “But that is not what happens here. We are normal people here.”
At the new location, the Barbara Ann Bakery signs have been painted over, and a steel fence surrounds most of the property.
The door, on the former bakery truck loading dock, is unlocked.
“All the doors are unlocked here,” Hillier said. “You put locks on doors, you got something to hide.”
The entrance leads to a dimly lit, red-painted waiting room where women in lingerie talk among themselves while waiting for customers. A visitor is led past an open closet where dozens of leather belts hang on hooks, and down a red hallway past smaller “encounter” rooms, where Hillier said the club offers members an opportunity to indulge in “psychodrama” and “consensual exchanges of authority” with the women who work there.
Customers pay $10 to join the club and $100 per half hour to use the “encounter rooms,” named after famous writers of sadomasochistic literature and the club’s women employees.
Rooms in previous locations have been decorated in fantasy themes, such as Victorian England or the Spanish Inquisition.
Open from noon to 3 a.m., the Chateau never caters to more than half a dozen customers at a time, Hillier said.
“We are very discreet,” he said.
See also Pain & Pleasure Palace and/or Anyone been to the Chateau
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