Freehold Township, NJ Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Section 190-200 of the Freehold Township Code, part of Chapter 190 Land Use, groups adult bookstores, adult motion-picture theaters, body painting studios, exotic dance or strip clubs, modeling shops and tattoo shops under a single conditional-use standard rather than permitting them by right anywhere in the township. An operator must first secure a conditional use permit from the Planning Board, and the Board can impose additional requirements it deems necessary beyond the three numeric separations written into the section itself. The first separation bars any of these uses from locating within 3,000 feet of a school, hospital, house of worship, library or public building.

The second bars the same uses from clustering: no covered establishment may sit within 3,000 feet of another adult bookstore, adult motion-picture theater, body painting studio, exotic dance or strip club, modeling studio or tattoo shop, which prevents an adult-use row from forming anywhere in the township. The third imposes a 2,000-foot buffer from any area zoned for residential use or business commercial use, which given Freehold Township's residential and commercial zone coverage leaves only a narrow set of industrially zoned parcels as mathematically eligible sites.

Section 190-200D adds a procedural trigger: converting an existing building to any of these adult uses requires submission and review of a full, complete site plan under the same Chapter 190 procedures that govern any other development application, not a simple change-of-use sign-off. The section was amended three times, in 2007 (Ord. No. O-07-25), 2012 (Ord. No. O-12-4) and 2015 (Ord. No. O-15-26), each time under the same structure of a conditional use permit plus the three spacing rules. Separately, Chapter 190's Article XI zone list at § 190-154 places massage shops, cabarets, adult bookstores, body painting studios, modeling studios and tattoo shops together as conditional uses in the Industrial M-1 Zone, but that zone list does not by itself carry the § 190-200 spacing standards for every use it names.