Gaithersburg, MD Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

1 defines an adult-oriented establishment as one that, for money or other consideration, devotes more than 10 percent of its total floor area to selling, exhibiting, displaying, exchanging, renting or trading sexually explicit books, films, video, novelty items or paraphernalia, or that features nude adult entertainment performances. 10-1, the non-residential use table, permits that use by-right only in the I-1 and I-3 industrial zones and prohibits it in the CB commercial-buffer, C-1 local commercial and C-2 general commercial zones. 1-1 extends the same prohibition to every floating zone the city can apply, MXD mixed-use, CBD central business district, CD corridor development and MCD mixed-commercial development, marking the use flatly prohibited in all four.

1-1's residential use table has no adult-entertainment category at all, the same catch-all clause that bars unlisted uses forecloses the use in every residential zone as well. The practical effect is a floor-area-percentage test combined with an industrial-only location requirement: a bookstore or video business that stays under the 10 percent threshold for adult material is not swept into the definition at all and can operate under ordinary retail use rules, but one that crosses it must relocate to the I-1 or I-3 zone regardless of the material's format or delivery method.