Providence, R.I., Sex Industry Expands at Startling Pace.

Byline: W. Zachary Malinowski

Apr. 23--Two miles south of downtown, away from Waterplace Park, Providence Place mall and the upscale restaurants, lies another world that has become a destination for tourists. Chartered buses pull up to the curb outside the gaudy pink building on Allens Avenue with the flashing police light on the roof. Hundreds of cars pack the lots and side streets. Next door, dozens of pedestrians, almost all men, venture into a windowless brick warehouse.

The visitors, many from Massachusetts and Connecticut, are in pursuit of a common goal: sex.

Welcome to the underbelly of the Providence Renaissance. In recent years, the sex industry has exploded in the city, and a dreary industrial strip along Allens Avenue has become the most densely concentrated red-light district in New England.

Sex clubs have sprung up across the state capital: strip clubs, gay bathhouses, an under-21 strip club, a private swinger's club, massage parlors and sex video stores. There's also a studio on Allens Avenue that satisifies customers' appetite for bondage and other fetishes, including foot worship.

The sex industry represents another form of economic development. It pays millions in taxes, creates hundreds of jobs and attracts thousands of out-of-town spenders. The city's biggest gay bathhouse, the Megaplex, is owned by the man who, until recently, was Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.'s liaison to the gay community. The club has 15,000 members and charges $60 for annual dues; $40 for a six-month membership and $10 for an 18-hour pass.

In February, the Megaplex's owner, Fitzgerald Himmelsbach, was forced to resign his city post after publicity about a possible syphilis outbreak at his club, underscoring the gray area in which such clubs exist.