NOS News•
The municipality of Amsterdam has three locations in mind for a new ‘erotic center’ to be built, where some of the sex workers in the Red Light District will have to move to in the long term. The multi-storey building will either be on the NSDM wharf in Amsterdam-Noord or near the RAI congress center, mayor Halsema writes to the city council.
With the new building, the municipality hopes to reduce the crowds and nuisance in the Amsterdam Red Light District. “The quality of life for the residents has been under pressure for years due to the flow of tourists for whom the windows are only an attraction,” says Halsema. “Sex work is part of Amsterdam and will never disappear. But the situation in the city center is not tenable.”
The new erotic center will soon be able to accommodate about a hundred sex workers. There must also be room for catering, education and entertainment, among other things. According to the police, there is less risk of nuisance and drug trafficking at the three preferred locations than at other places in Amsterdam.
The municipality has published an ‘artist’s impression’ of the erotic center:
In the coming period, residents and entrepreneurs in the affected districts will still be able to respond to the plans of the municipality. The VVD and the CDA in the South district, where the two locations are located near the RAI, have already announced that they consider the possible arrival of the erotic center “a very bad thing”.
‘No sex amusement park’
“The area around the Zuidas and the RAI is a residential area with families, schools – such as primary schools and an ROC – and parks where many families and the elderly walk and recreate: completely unsuitable for an erotic center,” says VVD party leader Claudia van Zanten. NH News.
Her CDA colleague Jurriaan Limburg is also not in favor of such a center in Amsterdam South: “In the current plans it must become a place with a hundred tendon rooms, including a burlesque nightclub, a sex museum, bistros and a beauty salon. You have to not promote and encourage prostitution, let alone build some kind of sex amusement park,” he said to the regional broadcaster.
Mayor Halsema emphasizes in her letter that a lot of attention is paid to care and safe workplaces, partly because there must be a centrally regulated access to the building.
The city council is expected to make a decision on the location of the erotic center in the autumn. Eventually, several prostitution windows in the Red Light District will have to close, but the municipality does not yet know how many and when.
Nuisance and disrespectful behaviour
The city council has been working on changing the city’s prostitution policy for a few years now. In addition to the crowds and nuisance in the Red Light District, “the disrespectful behavior of visitors to sex workers and residents” was also a reason for this, Halsema writes in her letter to the city council.
Other measures are also being taken to limit nuisance in the area. For example, the prostitution windows there will have to close at 3 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. from April. A month later, a smoking ban will apply to the Red Light District. In the prostitution area in the center of the city, people will no longer be allowed to smoke a joint on the street.
