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ST. JOSEPH COUNTY ZONING ORDINANCE · ARTICLE 6, §6.01 · IN FORCE NOVEMBER 2026
No ban attempt exists to carry whole for this ground: no pair of sexually-oriented-business ordinances — summer-2019 or otherwise — was introduced for, aimed at, or passed concerning a swingers club or any sexually oriented business on Granger's unincorporated ground in the record reached, and no St. Joseph County Council minutes or Tribune item in the open record names one. What the county does have, and what is printed here in its place, is the standing regime that would govern any such use the moment it appeared: the St. Joseph County zoning ordinance's controlled-use provisions, Article 6, §6.01. "Adult business" is a recognised controlled use, admitted only as a special exception in the C Commercial and GI General Industrial districts, and the definition is a closed list — adult bookstore, adult motion picture theatre, adult mini motion picture theatre, adult motion picture arcade, adult cabaret (Class B cabaret), adult drive-in theatre, adult live entertainment arcade, adult massage parlour, adult motel, or "adult service establishment," defined as a facility providing a preponderance of services involving specified sexual activities or the display of specified anatomical areas, where "specified sexual activities" include acts of sexual intercourse, masturbation or sodomy, and erotic touching. A swingers club is nowhere named in the list; whether one would be classed as an adult service establishment (or as a private club outside the list) is a question no county decision in the record has had to answer. The spacing rules are the teeth: no controlled use may stand within 1,000 feet of another controlled use, and no adult business may stand within 500 feet of any district that allows residential use as a primary use, or of a lot legally established for a dwelling, religious, school or park use, or of a use established for the care of children. A house on the Granger ground, which the Neighborhoods file shows to be almost entirely residential plat ground, would find little ground inside those circles that is not already taken. The 2000-era ordinance wave the county shared with South Bend and Mishawaka — the strict SOB ordinances the Tribune's own pages applauded in the "strictest laws in the country" correspondence of the time — is the nearest thing to a ban attempt in the county's history, and it was aimed at the strip-club and adult-bookstore trade on the cities' corridors, not at a club, and it produced no Granger item. The category is legislated about in the county, at the level of the category, and never litigated about on this ground.
Sources: St. Joseph County Zoning Ordinance, Art. 6, §6.01, "Regulations for Controlled Uses" (sjcindiana.gov, county Document Center), read November 2026: adult-business definitions; special-exception-only districts (C and GI); 1,000-foot and 500-foot spacing rules. County Council minutes and the Tribune record as openly indexed, searched November 2026 for a county SOB ordinance or ban attempt concerning this category: none returned for this ground.