Cities often cite studies showing that strip clubs and topless bars increase crime and lower property values to justify strict regulations for adult businesses.

MEI-CHUN JAU/DMNWhile cities have defended regulation of strip and topless clubs with studies showing their negative effect on neighborhoods, the Texas City Attorneys Association wants to see if sexually oriented stores like this one on Greenville Avenue in Dallas have similar effects.

Now cities throughout Texas are being asked to help pay for a $100,000 study that would be the first to focus strictly on the impact of these businesses.

"These studies, once they're done, will have usefulness in more than one state," said Bennett Sandlin, general counsel for the Texas City Attorneys Association, which is commissioning the study.

So far, six cities, including Arlington, Frisco, Garland and Kennedale, are contributing to the study, and a number of others, including Richardson and Dallas, are weighing participation, said Wayne Olson, city attorney for Kennedale, who is coordinating the fundraising.

The city attorneys association, which is affiliated with the Texas Municipal League, has contributed $10,000 and is asking cities to donate 3 cents per capita, with a $10,000 cap.

The city is being sued over its requirement that the sexually oriented businesses obtain special permits and is rewriting its licensing and zoning regulations for them.

Although tracking the stores is difficult, Mr. Sandlin said, "I think we're seeing more of those types of businesses. They're growing at a more rapid rate than strip clubs."

While cities can't ban sexually oriented businesses, they can impose zoning and licensing requirements to protect the public from their "secondary effects."

A 1984 Indianapolis study that's often cited in court cases found a 23 percent increase in overall crime and a 20 percent jump in sex-related crimes in an area of the city with adult entertainment businesses, including bookstores.

But many of these kinds of studies are flawed, said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade organization for the adult industry.

She said sexually oriented businesses often have less crime than other places that cater to adults, such as bars, and are being unfairly targeted for regulation.

"Sexually oriented businesses are held to higher standards than other businesses, and they often meet or exceed those standards," Ms. Duke said.

"Study after study, going back almost 40 years, shows that when an adult business opens, crime rises for a block or two blocks around that business," said Dr. Richard McCleary, a professor of criminology at the University of California-Irvine who is one of three experts chosen to conduct the Texas study.

"These stores, sometimes called off-site businesses, have argued that they do not have secondary effects because their customers run in, make their purchases, and drive home," Dr. McCleary said.

In 2003, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down San Antonio's sexually oriented business regulations because the city didn't provide evidence that adult-oriented stores have harmful effects.

Last month, the same court that ruled in the San Antonio case upheld Kennedale's ordinance because the city provided two studies that showed a link between adult bookstores and decreased property values.

One was the Indianapolis study, which concluded: "The best professional judgment available indicates overwhelmingly that adult entertainment businesses - even a relatively passive use such as an adult bookstore - have a serious negative effect on their immediate environs."

While that ruling was significant, experts say, the proposed Texas study is necessary to establish bedrock research that can pass further judicial scrutiny.

While these businesses don't have live entertainment, he thinks they can be a crime magnet because they tend to attract male customers from long distances who are "open to vice overtures - drugs and sex. They carry cash."

He noted that a man was shot outside two Kennedale adult bookstores on March 1 - a week after the Fifth Circuit Court upheld that city's sexually oriented business ordinance.

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