Daytona Beach, FL Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

14 defines Commercial: Adult Uses to cover adult bookstores and adult theaters, distinguished by being largely devoted to selling, renting or presenting sexually explicit media or live performances. The stated purpose is to avoid concentrating these uses, protect the visual appearance of the areas where they locate, and keep them from impeding redevelopment or neighborhood revitalization, particularly in heavily used pedestrian areas. To that end, the Code prohibits adult uses in any Redevelopment Area regardless of what the underlying base district's use table would otherwise allow, and confines them, where permitted, to the BA business district.

Within BA, three separation standards apply at once: a lot cannot sit within 400 feet of a residential district, a T-1 or T-2 tourist district, or the residential portion of a Planned Development; it cannot sit within 1,000 feet of another lot already containing an adult book/video store or adult theater; and it cannot sit within 400 feet of a school, park, playground, place of worship, or other place where minors regularly gather. Once a use lawfully meets these distances, a later rezoning or a later-arriving school or residential district next door does not retroactively put it out of compliance; the Code treats it as continuing to comply.

Physically, every window, door or other opening has to be blacked out or otherwise obstructed so the interior cannot be viewed from outside, and any room used for a live performance must have at least 500 square feet of floor area. Uses prohibited under this section cannot be authorized through a Planned Development rezoning, Special Use Permit, or Public/Semipublic Use Permit.