Elyria, OH Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Two parts of the Elyria Codified Ordinances control adult businesses: a licensing chapter and a zoning section. Chapter 746 covers adult arcades, adult bookstores, novelty stores and video stores, adult cabarets, adult motion picture theaters, adult theaters, nude model studios and sexual encounter centers (§ 746.03). Section 746.04 bars operating one without a valid license from the City, and bars retaining an employee who lacks a sexually oriented business employee license. Section 746.05 separately requires that employee license.

Applications go to the Chief of Police on his form, and the City can require fingerprints (§ 746.06). On filing a completed application the Chief issues a temporary license immediately, and within 21 days after receiving it the Chief approves or denies (§ 746.07). Approval follows unless the Chief finds, among other grounds, that an applicant is under 18, left out or falsified required information, was denied a license or had one revoked within the preceding 12 months, was convicted of a specified criminal activity, would violate the Planning and Zoning Code, or has not paid the fee.

Fees under § 746.10 are a $200.00 non-refundable application and investigation fee for a new business license and $100.00 for renewal, plus an annual $100.00 license fee within 30 days of issuance or renewal. Employee licenses cost $50.00 new and $25.00 on renewal. Licenses expire one year from issuance, and a renewal application is due no more than 90 days and no less than 30 days before the expiration date (§ 746.12). Police can inspect the public portion of each licensed business no more than four times in a calendar year (§ 746.11).

Location is set by Planning and Zoning Code § 1187.04. These businesses can be established only in the "L-I" Light Industrial District and the "H-I" Heavy Industrial District, and not within 500 feet of a house of worship, a school or child day care facility, a residential structure or residentially zoned land, a public park or recreational area, or a premises licensed under Ohio's alcoholic beverage control regulations. Distance is measured in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures, from the nearest portion of the business's lot to the nearest portion of the lot of the protected use.