Would-be strip club owner, tired of dealing with Modesto: ‘I’ve had enough of these people’

A Los Angeles businessman said he has dropped his plans to open an adult cabaret featuring strippers performing erotic dances in downtown Modesto. Tony Toutouni said he also will end his lawsuit against the city, which alleges it was trying to stop the cabaret from opening.

Toutouni and his associates had planned to buy the building that once housed Hero’s Sports Lounge and St. Stan’s Brewery at Ninth and L streets, near the DoubleTree hotel. They put a cash deposit down for the building and it was in escrow in July. A “sales pending” banner was affixed to the Century 21 M&M Associates sign in front of the building. The real estate sign remains but the banner is gone.

The Century 21 agent who represents the building’s owner did not return phone calls seeking comment. But Toutouni said he forfeited his $30,000 cash deposit to back out of the sale. The building’s owner, Larry Mariani of Stockton, said he was not aware the sale had fallen through but added he has not kept up with the transaction recently.

Toutouni said he received several anonymous calls telling him his cabaret was not wanted in Modesto and claims the city has not been cooperative.

“I just want to wash my hands of this and walk away. I’ve had enough of these people,” said Toutouni, who said he is a businessman involved in real estate and added: “I’m known in L.A. as the big bachelor playboy, flashy cars, flashy house, lots of women behind me.”

A Beverly Hills-based corporation called Sassafrass 821 in July filed a lawsuit in federal court against Modesto, claiming the city’s restrictions on where adult businesses can locate were unconstitutional “because they do not provide a sufficient number of alternative sites for the location of an adult cabaret,” according to court records. The lawsuit claims the city’s zoning regulations for downtown land use are muddled.

Toutouni – who has said he is an executive with Sassafrass and with its parent company, Beverly Hills Real Estate Holdings – said the city provided him with a list of roughly 240 locations where he could establish the cabaret but said they were in “the middle of nowhere” and not promising for his business. “Basically, every boonies they could find,” he said. “The city has been absolutely ridiculous, absolutely out of their minds.”

Modesto claims its restrictions are constitutional and says it has provided adequate locations for adult businesses, according to court records. Adult businesses cannot be within 300 feet of residential zones, and the city claims the Hero’s building is within 300 feet of two parcels zoned for residential use, though there are no residential buildings near the proposed cabaret.

Santa Monica attorney Roger Jon Diamond represents Sassafrass. He provided the contact information for Toutouni. The federal lawsuit still was active as of Thursday and a telephone meeting among the attorneys and the court was scheduled for Tuesday.

This story was originally published November 4, 2016 at 2:29 PM with the headline "Would-be strip club owner, tired of dealing with Modesto: ‘I’ve had enough of these people’."