Greensboro, NC Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

N of the Land Development Ordinance defines sexually oriented businesses to include sex shops, sexually oriented media stores, sexually oriented cabarets, and sexually oriented motion picture theaters, treating each as a principal use in its own right. Property separation standards require 1,200 feet of distance between any two sexually oriented businesses and 1,000 feet of distance from a religious assembly use, a public or private elementary or secondary school, a child day care center or nursery school, a public park, or any residentially zoned property.

The ordinance also bans these uses outright from the Old Greensborough National Register Historic District, regardless of distance from other protected uses. No sexually oriented business is permitted to have sleeping quarters on the premises, and the code caps density on any one property: there cannot be more than one sexually oriented business in the same building or structure, and no other principal use, retail, office, or otherwise, may share that building, structure, or property with a sexually oriented business. The ordinance further prohibits a specific list of uses citywide regardless of zoning: massage establishments where the massage is performed by someone not licensed under the North Carolina Massage and Bodywork Act, escort services that advertise, offer, or provide massage or a sexual act, nude model or nude photography studios, sexual encounter centers, sexually oriented motels, and sexually oriented video arcades.

Because the spacing standards run from schools, parks, day cares, churches, and residential zoning as well as from each other, the combined effect in a majority-residential city like Greensboro is that only a narrow set of nonresidential parcels away from protected uses can legally host one of these businesses.