Taking their toys away
CLARENCE Valley Council may have driven a local business out of the area when it knocked back a development application for an adult toy shop in Prince St at its meeting on Tuesday.
A partner in Grafton's Adult Toy Box, Meagan Martin, said her business partner, Troy Munro, was in Coffs Harbour yesterday looking for premises for their business after they were disappointed on Tuesday.
"We're not sure what we're going to do really," Ms Martin said.
"But taking the business down to Coffs Harbour is one of our options."
The partners, who both grew up in the Clarence, wanted to set up a shopfront to capitalise on the explosion of interest in the products they have been selling through party plans.
"We did a quick count and we came up with more than 4000 sales in the past 11 months," Ms Martin said.
And after knocking them back on Tuesday, the council was little help yesterday morning.
"I went down to council to talk with them yesterday about where we could go," she said.
"They said we could go any- where because our application fitted in with the planning rules."
She said the prospect of choosing another site in the Grafton area and council refusing it again was daunting.
"We did everything that was asked of us to comply with what they wanted," Ms Martin said.
"We even waited until the law changed at the end of last year to apply to make sure everything was right."
Ms Martin said the council voted 5-4 against the Adult Toy Box development application.
Mayor Richie Williamson did not reply to a call about this issue late yesterday afternoon.
