“I personally believe there should be a business like mine on every corner,” he says, only partly kidding.

One place where this scenario has become a near-reality is Fulton Industrial Boulevard.

From I-20 south to Campbellton Road, the Fulton Industrial corridor is lined with cavernous warehouses, distribution hubs and manufacturing facilities owned by such corporate behemoths as Anheuser-Busch, McDonald’s and Warner-Electra-Atlantic records.

Dozens of Georgia businesses are represented as well, including Coca-Cola, with a sprawling bottling plant, Bronner Brothers hair products and the Great American Cookie Co.

With more than 1,000 companies and 30,000 employees along an eight-mile stretch, Fulton Industrial arguably is the richest piece of roadway in the country’s tax rolls.

And yet, the half-mile strip of pavement at its northern end – straddled by I-20, just outside the western Perimeter – has long been home to a woebegone collection of truck stops, fast-food joints, seedy motels and second-rate strip clubs.

A few enterprising businesspeople, however, apparently decided the area had retail potential. Last year brought a large influx of investment – but it likely wasn’t the kind most local boosters were seeking.

In the space of a few months, Inserection owner Michael Morrison opened one of his trademark “adult fantasy stores,” as well as New York Video -- a more hardcore, video-heavy store – across the road from each other. Two private swingers clubs, Trapeze and 2 Risqué; an S&M nightclub, Club Kink; and Club Wax, a large strip club, set up shop a stone’s throw apart on a side street overlooking Fulton Industrial. Finally, the Love Shack opened across from the entrance to the country-owned Charlie Brown Airport.

In roughly a year’s time, the gateway to Fulton County’s most prosperous industrial district had been transformed from a run-down retail pocket into metro Atlanta’s new red-light district – all within sight of the Six Flags roller coasters.

IT WAS THE EARLY ‘80S. Ronald Reagan was talking tough to the Evil Empire. Michael Jackson’s Thriller was burning up the album charts. Flashdance was packing movie theaters. Excited Americans were tuning in to watch the space shuttle take off.

And, in Atlanta, all-out war was raging between City Hall and the last few remaining “yellow-front” bookstores selling men’s magazines, stag films and adult novelties. Years of obscenity busts, subpoenas, fines and protests had taken their toll. In 1986, the city’s last smut shop, coyly named Books & Gifts, shut its doors for good.

It would be nearly a decade before another local entrepreneur would again openly attempt to sell vibrators or rent porn videos in Atlanta.

All of which may seem odd when one considers that, only a few years earlier, downtown and Midtown had been awash in pornography and adult businesses. The neighborhoods along Peachtree and 14th streets were home to a crowded roster of dirty bookshops, XXX-rated cinemas and such national retail chains as The Pleasure Chest, which catered to an odd blend of sexually liberated flower children, S&M enthusiasts and the raincoat brigade.

Which, in turn, proved to be a boon for local exotic-dancing clubs, such as the Clermont Lounge, Tattletales and the now-departed Domino Lounge and Sans Souci. When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision declaring that public nudity was not, in itself, obscene, Atlanta strip clubs quietly did away with tassels and G-strings.

With its attention fixed on closing adult bookstores, the City Council did little to curb the burgeoning nudie-bar scene. To the contrary, many local officials welcomed the growth of the convention industry as Atlanta gained a unique status: the only major American city where strip-club patrons can enjoy the Full Monty and a full bar.

WHILE THE STRIP-CLUB industry has enjoyed a mostly hands-off relationship with Atlanta, it has often met with strong resistance when trying to make inroads into the suburbs.

Until the last decade or so, there were only a handful of clubs located outside the city limits, all in neglected commercial areas: Flashers in Sandy Springs, Boomer’s in a shopping center off Cobb Parkway, the abject Cyprus Lounge on a rundown stretch of Canton Road in Marietta. And, of course, there were the three clubs on Fulton Industrial, dating back to a time long before anyone imagined the road as a candidate for civic renewal.

And so it’s been possible for businessmen such as Florida sex-club veteran Alan Mostow to take advantage of the low rent and lack of neighborhood scrutiny here to open Trapeze and Klub Kink with little or not public outcry.

Citing an all-but unverifiable statistic, Mostow says he was drawn to the Atlanta market because “it has the largest number of adult clubs per capita in the country.”

Since neither club sought a liquor license, Mostow was able to avoid the type of furor over permits that many strip clubs face. Trapeze, which is thronged with swingers on weekend nights, calls little attention to itself, building its membership by work-of-mouth and tightly targeted advertising, rather than catchy radio jingles or swirling searchlights.

“I’m here for the next 20 years,” Mostow says, by way of explaining that he aims to be a good corporate citizen.

Certainly, as an entrepreneur, he did his homework. Although Fulton Industrial would seem an out-of-the way location for an ordinary nightclub, easy access from two nearby interstates and a side-street setting make it ideal for destination-oriented, special-interest clubs like his.

The only people likely to be in the area after sundown are long-haul truckers, third-shift factory workers, travelers on the lookout for cheap lodging – and patrons of the many adult businesses in the area. Which begs the question: If Fulton Industrial isn’t an appropriate site for adult businesses, what is?

Cornetta says he didn’t tell the county he was opening an adult entertainment business because it isn’t one, according to the county’s own definition, which applies only to places in which employees or patrons get naked. The county recently changed that ordinance, which attorney Begner believes will mean the alleged zoning violations are negated.

The county’s adult entertainment ordinance often reads as if it was drafted by a prudish schoolmarm armed with thesaurus. Prohibited activities include the exhibition of “human male genitalia in a discernibly turgid state” – can’t they just call it a hard-on? – and such obscure acts as “zooerasty” (bestiality), “anilingus” (rimming) and “coprophagy,” which, if done successfully, should result in a shit-eating grin.

As for the switcharoo on the name of the store, when asked if he’d planned to change it all along, Cornetta says his lawyers asked him not to comment. But he’s very vocal about his willingness to take Fulton, DeKalb or anyone else to the mat.