Feasibility of turning a church into a strip club

Definitely believable. I have religious relatives who believe listening to secular music will send them to hell. They'd really freak over the premise of your story. (Personally, I love it.)

I'd be curious to know how Catholic-church-turned-strip-club would go over in New Orleans? I wonder because the mixture of spirituality and glorious hedonism is thoroughly blended into the culture.

 

As above, you need private/semi-private areas for lap dances. You may want a VIP/Champagne room, the church I was forced to go went to as a child had a balcony in the back that might work. Also, you have two "main stages," I'd suggest making one of them a bit larger and calling it the main stage, and splitting the other into two smaller stages. The girl on the main stage chooses the music, and usually goes through three songs. Assuming it's a full-nude establishment, in the first song she's usually just strutting her stuff, top comes off in the second one, and the third is where she gets fully nude. On the smaller stages, the girls might perform for only one song or so, as a sort of preview to get patrons interested in them before their turn on the main stage, and they probably won't get completely nude.

Or, uh, that's what a friend told me....

 

I've yet to be to an actual strip club, so this is really helpful. I can keep the one on the right as the main stage and do some altering to the other one. Perhaps the space could be used for a buffet, which I've heard are present in some strip clubs.

As for the VIP/Champagne room, I could probably turn the choir loft into it. It's a raised platform at the back of the sanctuary and is usually pretty spacious.

 

It'd really be interesting to see how something like this plays out in real life, but from the research I've done I've only found strip clubs that were turned into churches, never vice versa. It's not exactly something I can go out and ask people and I don't have the funds to buy and renovate a former church just for the story

 

When I first came to this thread, I actually thought about the Lutheran churches I've been to and most of them looked like Soviet era concrete bureaus.

Anyway, a cool idea! They could have theme nights. Strippers dress up as nuns and whatnot.

 

I just thought I'd add that something similar to this happened in an episode of the TV show Lewis. (The episode is in Series 2, called "Life Born of Fire". It's available on Netflix.) A church wasn't turned into a strip club, but it was turned into a nightclub as a way of sticking the middle finger up at God.

 

In general, zoning would be a problem, even thought such laws and ordinances vary from city to city.

There are generally varying residential levels R-1, R-2 and R-3. Often churches are in residential areas, and those would be out of bounds, unless a variance would be permitted by the city council. Not likely, unless residents would want that type of establishment in their backyard, and would heavily petition the council to allow it. And that seems unlikely.

Most businesses of the strip-club sort have restrictions on how many feet (500 to 1000) they can be located from schools, daycare centers, public parks, sports fields/public pools, even other churches. There are B-1 or B-2 or M-1 (manufacturing) to M-3 for the various levels/types of business or manufacturing. I cannot say for cities, but for smaller towns and such, a church would not likely be located in a zoned manufacturing section/area. Again, a variance could be sought, but the local businesses might or might not be interested in having a strip club as a neighbor. Even if they are interested, it would be an uphill battle, depending on the makeup of the council and their constituents. If it is a largely secular city or area, then they would be more likely to offer a variance to the zoning, but in that case, 'sticking it to religious folks to make a point' will be less likely to have any impact, because most of the population won't care.

That said, a church that would be available for such a conversion, it is unlikely that the parishioners will even be around anymore to care much. Maybe a few old folks. But a closed, abandoned church would likely have been closed because there was no longer a local congregation to support it. I say this because a church that is new in closing is very unlikely to sell to a developer with sketchy (in their opinion) ideas of what to turn the property into, or may have deed restrictions that would make such a takeover then conversion unlikely.

However, as was said, it's fiction and in a fictional city:

With fiction, anything is possible, and it really depends on the audience/readers as to whether this (lax research/mapping) would be a concern or not.