Opinion ID: 755151
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alternative Avenues of Communication

Text: 12 Plaintiffs' argument that federal courts apply a more stringent standard than the New York courts applied to determine whether there are reasonable alternative avenues of communication is also unavailing. Indeed, the New York Court of Appeals summarized the standard that federal courts have applied, and proceeded to apply that very standard as the basis for its inquiry under the state Constitution. The court's discussion merits quotation at length: 13 Relying on a formula derived from City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres..., the federal courts have generally concluded that reasonable alternative avenues of communication exist if there is sufficient land area open for use by adult businesses in all stages of development from raw land to developed, industrial, warehouse, office and shopping space that is criss-crossed by freeways, highways and roads (id., at 53-54, 106 S.Ct. 925). Under Renton, land that is already occupied by commercial and manufacturing facilities and undeveloped land that is not for sale or lease is not to be automatically deemed unavailable. Further, any reduction in profitability caused by a forced relocation is not relevant to the availability inquiry (see, City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, [475 U.S.] at 53, 106 S.Ct. 925; Woodall v. City of El Paso, 49 F.3d 1120, 1124-25 [ (5th Cir.) ], cert [.] denied [,] 516 U.S. 988, 116 S.Ct. 516, 133 L.Ed.2d 425 [ (1995) ]; Grand Brittain, Inc. v. City of Amarillo, Tex., 27 F.3d 1068, 1070 [ (5th Cir.1994) ]; see also, Town of Islip v. Caviglia, [73 N.Y.2d 544,] 555, 560, 542 N.Y.S.2d 139, 540 N.E.2d 215 [ (1989) ] (areas of a municipality set aside for adult uses need not be prime locations)). Rather, the inquiry is limited to the physical and legal availability of alternative sites within the municipality's borders and whether those sites are part of an actual business real estate market (see, Topanga Press, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles, 989 F.2d 1524, 1530-31 [ (9th Cir.1993) ], cert [.] denied [,] 511 U.S. 1030, 114 S.Ct. 1537, 128 L.Ed.2d 190 [ (1994) ]; see also, Woodall v. City of El Paso, supra; Alexander v. City of Minneapolis, 928 F.2d 278 [ (8th Cir.1991) ].) 14 In determining whether proposed relocation sites are part of an actual business real estate market, the courts have considered such factors as their accessibility to the general public, the surrounding infrastructure, the pragmatic likelihood of their ever actually becoming available and, finally, whether the sites are suitable for some generic commercial enterprise (see [Topanga], 989 F.2d at 1531). Notably, these considerations dovetail nicely with Islip's requirement that there be ample space available for adult uses after the rezoning and no showing of a substantial reduction in the total number of adult outlets or the accessibility of those outlets to their potential patrons (73 N.Y.2d at 555, 560, 542 N.Y.S.2d 139, 540 N.E.2d 215). With these considerations as a backdrop, we turn now to the specific facts and contentions presented here. 15 Stringfellow's, 91 N.Y.2d at ----, 671 N.Y.S.2d 406, 694 N.E.2d 407, 1998 WL 77749, at  9-10. 16 Significantly, the two cases most heavily relied upon by plaintiffs in arguing that federal law imposes more of an evidentiary burden on the City to prove the availability and suitability of alternative sites than the New York state courts imposed--Topanga Press, Inc. v. City of Los Angeles and Woodall v. City of El Paso--were cited and relied upon by the New York Court of Appeals. Forced to acknowledge this fact, which strongly suggests that the state court was not answering a different question or applying a standard less favorable to plaintiffs than federal courts would apply, plaintiffs argue that while the New York Court of Appeals did refer to the Topanga and Woodall decisions[, a]nd ... did suggest that the City was obligated to demonstrate 'the physical and legal availability of alternative sites .... and whether those sites are part of the actual business real estate market[,]' ... there is a serious analytic gap between this language ... and the factual record developed in the state trial court. Brief of Hickerson Appellants at 31-32. Plaintiffs argue, in other words, that while the New York Court of Appeals purported to be making the same determination that a federal court would make under federal law to determine the availability of reasonable alternative avenues of communication, plaintiffs should not be collaterally estopped from relitigating this issue because the serious analytic gap between the evidence and the recited standard belies any conclusion that federal standards were genuinely applied. 17 We find no such serious analytic gap, nor any reason to doubt that the New York Court of Appeals answered the same question that would be dispositive under federal law. Plaintiffs' primary argument to the contrary is that federal law requires municipalities to identify the specific physically and legally available relocation sites. Plaintiffs have produced an affidavit from a land-use planning consultant, Robert McLaughlin (the McLaughlin Affidavit or Affidavit), which asserts that some of the land identified by the City as available for relocating adult establishments is not realistically available, for a variety of reasons--some of the land, for example, is allegedly occupied by oil tank farms and structures including numerous and large facilities of the New York City Sanitation Department. McLaughlin Affidavit at 24, 26. Unless the City can precisely identify the physically and legally available sites to which the approximately 147 adult establishments that will need to relocate can move, plaintiffs argue, the City has not carried its burden of proving that reasonable alternative avenues of communication exist under federal law. 18 Plaintiffs' argument suffers from several flaws. First, we are aware of no federal case, and plaintiffs direct our attention to none, that requires municipalities to identify the exact locations to which adult establishments may relocate, as opposed to identifying the general areas that remain available and proving that such areas contain enough potential relocation sites that are physically and legally available to accommodate the adult establishments. This is precisely the standard of proof to which the New York Court of Appeals held the City. Clearly then, to second-guess that court's determination of this issue would violate the full faith and credit statute. 19 After observing that it is incumbent upon the municipal defendants to demonstrate that sufficient alternative receptor sites are available, Stringfellow's, 91 N.Y.2d at ----, 671 N.Y.S.2d 406, 694 N.E.2d 407, 1998 WL 77749, at  10, the New York Court of Appeals noted the City's evidence that, after excluding land identified by the City as being encumbered by properties unlikely to be developed for commercial use, 4% of the total land area of the City remained open to adult establishments. Maps prepared by the City reflected that, after factoring in the Zoning Amendment's 500-foot buffer zones, over 500 potential sites remained available. See id. Further, the New York Court of Appeals considered the City's evidence that the zoning districts left open to adult establishments permit a wide mix of commercial, retail, entertainment and manufacturing uses, id., and that all of these areas in Manhattan and 80% of the areas in the other boroughs of New York are within a ten-minute walk from a subway line or major bus route, see id. 5 20 The court did not ignore plaintiffs' evidence--namely, the McLaughlin Affidavit--that portions of the 4% of unencumbered land identified by the City were not realistically available, but rather found this evidence insufficient to raise a material question of fact regarding the availability of reasonable alternative avenues of communication. The court partially discredited the McLaughlin Affidavit because McLaughlin considered land to be unavailable that, under Renton, is not to be excluded--such as industrial areas, undeveloped land, and warehouse areas. See Renton, 475 U.S. at 53-54, 106 S.Ct. 925 (finding available land to be adequate where it included acreage in all stages of development from raw land to developed, industrial, warehouse, office, and shopping space, and observing that the fact that the establishments must fend for themselves in the real estate market, on an equal footing with other prospective purchasers and lessees, does not give rise to a First Amendment violation); see also, e.g., Grand Brittain, Inc. v. City of Amarillo, Tex., 27 F.3d at 1069-70 (holding that adult-use zoning ordinance provided reasonable alternative avenues of communication even though 90% of prospective sites were on undeveloped land). The court also recognized that while the McLaughlin Affidavit identified, within the 4% of purportedly unencumbered land identified by the City, specific sites that were clearly not realistically available, this was insufficient to cast doubt upon the availability of reasonable alternative avenues of communication where the City had produced evidence showing that this land could accommodate over 500 establishments under the terms of the Zoning Amendment, approximately three times the number of establishments that currently exist: 21 The most significant flaw in McLaughlin's affidavit ... is the absence of any attempt to quantify his observations or to make concrete allegations as to precisely how many of the 500 potential receptor sites identified by defendants were, in his estimate, unavailable. 6 To be sure, the affidavit lists a significant number of sites that are pragmatically unavailable because their current uses are so entrenched that they are unlikely to become part of the commercial real estate market in the foreseeable future. Included in this category are such diverse sites as those that house the northern half of Federal Plaza in Manhattan, the Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve in Staten Island, a New York City fire house in Brooklyn and a United Parcel Service facility in Queens. However, McLaughlin's criticisms about various individual sites do not provide an adequate counter to defendants' supported claim that within the available acreage as a whole there are more than enough receptor sites to accommodate the existing adult entertainment industry. 22 Stringfellow's, 91 N.Y.2d at ----, 671 N.Y.S.2d 406, 694 N.E.2d 407, 1998 WL 77749, at  11; see also Stringfellow's, 171 Misc.2d at 396, 653 N.Y.S.2d at 814 (Even if the City's estimate overstates the number of potentially viable relocation sites, there still remains ample space for more than the existing numbers of adult establishments.... [N]othing in Renton, Islip or any existing case law requires the City to identify specific sites that are actually available.); cf. Woodall v. City of El Paso, 49 F.3d at 1126 (stating, in response to complaints by adult establishments as to the viability of particular sites, that even if we agreed that ... these sites suffered from defects so severe as to take them out of the commercial real estate market and render them physically unavailable, there was no evidence that surrounding sites suffered from the same impediments so as to render them likewise unavailable). 23 In sum, there is no reason to doubt that the New York Court of Appeals applied the same standard and answered the same questions that apply under federal law in determining whether the Zoning Amendment provided for reasonable alternative avenues of communication. The argument that federal law would have required the City to identify the precise sites to which adult establishments could relocate is not only unsupported by any federal case law, but is belied by our recent decision in Buzzetti. In Buzzetti, far from suggesting that the City's evidence was inadequate because it was not site-specific, we held that there can be no doubt on this record that the Zoning Amendment allows for reasonable alternative avenues of communication. 140 F.3d at 140 (internal quotation marks omitted). Although we did not have the McLaughlin Affidavit before us in Buzzetti, the McLaughlin Affidavit is only relevant to whether plaintiffs have produced enough counter-evidence to cast doubt on the City's evidence, and it does not change the fact that under federal law the City was not required to identify precise relocation sites in order to prove the existence of reasonable alternative avenues of communication. The state courts' determination that the McLaughlin Affidavit did not cast sufficient doubt on the City's evidence to preclude summary judgment--based largely on the Affidavit's failure to quantify the number of feasible sites, its reliance on premises that were invalid under Renton, and the persuasiveness of the City's own evidence--does not, in short, represent a departure from federal standards. The full faith and credit statute therefore bars plaintiffs from relitigating the issue of alternative sites in federal court. 24