York County, SC Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Unincorporated York County treats adult businesses as conditional or special exception uses under the Unified Development Ordinance, not a by-right use. 271 Use Table, meaning a property owner must first secure that conditional or special exception approval through the Planning and Development Services Department and, where required, the Board of Zoning Appeals before opening. 281 caps density hard: no more than one adult business is permitted on any single lot, so a strip of separately platted parcels is the only way to site more than one.

282 then layers on distance separation. An adult business must sit at least 1,000 feet from any other adult business, preventing the clustering pattern seen in some metro-adjacent counties. It must also sit at least 1,000 feet from any lot zoned PR, AGC, AGC-I, RUD, RUD-I, RSF-40, RSF-30, RMX-20, RMX-10, or RMX-6, the county's planned, agricultural-conservation, rural, and residential single-family and mixed-residential districts. The same 1,000-foot buffer applies to any lot containing a dwelling unit, school, day care center, religious facility, or public park, and the code expressly states this protection runs regardless of whether that protected lot sits inside an incorporated municipality like Rock Hill, Fort Mill, Tega Cay, Clover, or York, or in the unincorporated county itself.

Because the buffer reaches across municipal boundaries, an adult business site search effectively has to clear distances measured against protected uses countywide, not just within the unincorporated area. 1 of the York County Code of Ordinances, adopted as part of the county's land development regulations.