A sex shop is set to open near a school in the historic town of Waterloo, triggering significant concern among local residents and explicit condemnation from the town mayor.
"We tend to smile when I mention this issue, but I am regularly challenged by local residents who ask me: 'How can you let them settle down here?'" Waterloo mayor Florence Reuter (MR) told Le Soir. "It is not an issue of questioning the freedom of entrepreneurship and commerce, but rather of setting up an establishment that organises pornographic activities in this kind of environment."
She added: "Less than 200 meters from a football club with young children, not far from a dance school, a school... Do you get the picture?!"
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The shop, which will be situated along the town's main thoroughfare on the Chaussée de Bruxelles, will span over three floors. In addition to selling lingerie and a vast collection of sex toys, it will feature a jacuzzi and pornographic cinema room.
According to Le Soir, the store's owner has recently attempted to temper the local outcry by downplaying the shop's explicitly sexual nature: on its storefront, the shop will now market itself as "charming" rather than "erotic", and as a "love shop" rather than a "sex shop".
