Battle Creek, MI Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Section 1251.02 of the Battle Creek Planning and Zoning Code regulates adult businesses by location. Its stated purpose is to prevent a concentration of these uses in any one area and to prevent blighting of nearby residential neighborhoods. Section 1230.06 defines an adult business as any business in any use category, a substantial or significant portion of which consists of selling, renting, leasing, exhibiting, displaying or otherwise dealing in materials or devices that appeal to prurient interests and that also depict or describe sexual activities.

Only land zoned B-1, I-1 or I-2 qualifies, and the section carves out the Fort Custer Industrial Park inside the Battle Creek Tax Increment Financing Authority District and the Dickman Road Business Improvement District. Inside those zones, no adult business can sit within 1,000 feet of another adult business, within 1,000 feet of a church, school or public park, or within 300 feet of a residential or agricultural zoning district.

Distance is measured in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures or objects, from the property line of the adult business or the building containing it to the nearest property line of the protected use or district. Height, yard, lot area, lot width, building coverage, sign and parking requirements follow the zone where the business sits. No person can reside in, or permit anyone to reside in, the premises of an adult business.

Section 1251.02(d) states that its massage parlor provisions do not apply to hospitals, sanitariums, nursing homes, medical clinics, the offices of a state-licensed physician, surgeon, chiropractor, osteopath or physical therapist, or massage therapists licensed under Part 179A of the Michigan Public Health Code. The City Commission last amended the section through Ordinance 03-2023, passed 5-2-23.