Dane County, WI Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Chapter 10, Sec. 301 creates the Adult Entertainment (AED) Overlay District, which under subsection (5) applies only to land zoned M-I, Manufacturing and Industrial, the county will not permit an adult entertainment establishment anywhere else in unincorporated Dane County. Subsection (7) sets the siting standard: no location may sit less than 1,000 feet from any church, synagogue, temple, mosque or other place of worship; any residentially zoned district; a park, school, playground, day care center or public library; or any other adult book store or adult entertainment establishment.

The 1,000-foot line is measured straight, ignoring intervening buildings, from the nearest wall of the premises where entertainment is conducted to the nearest property line of the protected use, and a municipal boundary crossing the line does not change the calculation. The zoning administrator enforces additional operating conditions bundled into the same section: no display windows facing the street, only one non-flashing business sign no larger than 4 feet by 4 feet, a mandatory 1-square-foot 'Admittance to adults only' notice at every public entrance, and a ban on any area of the establishment shielded by doors, curtains, screens or barriers so that all entertainment stays visible from the main floor, a direct anti-solicitation and anti-prostitution measure written into subsection (7)(f).

Subsection (6) makes the use permitted (not conditional) once these standards are met, but subsection (3) preserves First Amendment protection for non-obscene plays, educational lectures and off-premises sale of recorded media, so the ordinance targets the physical secondary effects of the business rather than its content.