Davis, CA Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

410 of the Davis Municipal Code regulates what it calls 'sex oriented entertainment businesses,' a category defined broadly to cover sex oriented bookstores, motion picture theaters, hotels or motels, motion picture arcades, cabarets, model studios, and sexual encounter centers whose business is characterized by an emphasis on specified sexual activities or specified anatomical areas. Subsection (c)(1) confines these businesses to the Industrial (I) or Industrial Research (I-R) districts, or the portions of a Planned Development district designated for those uses, and layers on four distance buffers measured from the nearest property lines: 500 feet from any area zoned or used for residential purposes, 1,500 feet from any other sex oriented entertainment business, and 500 feet from any public or private school, public park, playground, recreational area, public building, church, or noncommercial religious establishment.

Operational rules apply on top of the locational limits: windows and doors must be screened so the interior cannot be viewed from outside, no sexually explicit advertising or merchandise may be visible from the public right-of-way, security personnel are required at a ratio of one per ten parking spaces, loitering and alcohol consumption are barred in parking lots, total signage is capped at twenty square feet (twenty-five on a corner lot), and parking must be provided at one space per two seats or one space per one hundred square feet of leasable floor area.

A property owner may ask the Project Planning Commission to waive a locational provision after a public hearing, if the Commission makes specific findings that the use will not harm nearby property or encourage blight.