Akron, OH Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

299(A) sets four location restrictions for a sexually oriented business: it cannot sit on a parcel within 500 feet of any Class U1 or U2 residential district; it cannot sit within 1,000 feet of a public library, private or public elementary or secondary school, public park, or church; it cannot sit within 1,000 feet of another sexually oriented business; and it may only be located in a Class U3 (Retail Business) or U4 (Commercial) district. Subsections (B) and (C) fix how those distances are measured: as a straight line from the nearest wall of the building housing the business to the nearest property line of the protected use (a religious facility, school, park, or residential district), without regard to intervening structures, streets, or objects, and, for spacing between two sexually oriented businesses, from the closest exterior wall of each structure.

Subsection (D) makes it unlawful to establish or operate a sexually oriented business in violation of any of these restrictions, while carving out an explicit exception protecting descriptive, printed, film, or video material, or a live performance, that has serious literary, artistic, political, medical, educational, or scientific value when taken as a whole. Because the spacing requirements stack, a parcel that is technically zoned U3 or U4 can still be disqualified if it falls inside any one of the three buffers.