Brookhaven, GA Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Section 15-513 sets two measured distances. Part (a) bars locating a sexually oriented business within 100 feet of another one, measured in a straight line between the closest points on the two property lines. Part (b) bars a location within 300 feet of a residential district, place of worship, park, or public library, measured from the closest part of the structure containing the business to the closest point on the district boundary or on the property line of the place of worship, park, or library. Both measurements run straight and ignore intervening structures or objects.

Section 15-497 defines the category as an adult bookstore or adult video store, an adult cabaret, an adult motion picture theater, a semi-nude model studio, or a sexual device shop. A bookstore has the principal business activity of adult items when they reach 35 percent of displayed merchandise, retail value, revenues, or floor space, or when it keeps at least 500 square feet for them or regularly offers at least 2,000 of the items. Showing, selling, or renting material rated NC-17 or R does not by itself make a business sexually oriented.

Spacing is one layer of the article. Section 15-498 requires a sexually oriented business license and, for workers, an employee license, filed in person at the office of the city manager or designee on a notarized application. Within 30 days of a completed application the city manager issues the license or a written notice of intent to deny (section 15-499). A license does not excuse the location rules, but a business in a formerly lawful location can still be licensed and renewed if it has not been discontinued for a continuous period of six months, enlarged, moved, or altered to increase nonconformity, and has not had its structure destroyed beyond 60 percent of fair market value. Licenses last one calendar year (section 15-502). Inside, section 15-511 requires semi-nude performers to stay at least six feet from patrons on a stage at least 18 inches from the floor in a room of at least 600 square feet, and bars anyone under 18 from the premises.