St. Johns County, FL Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

01, and even then the code layers on strict locational buffers before a permit can be granted. No Adult Bookstore, adult theater, adult restaurant or café, special cabaret, physical culture establishment, or adult photographic or modeling studio may be located within 2,000 feet of any unincorporated area of St. Johns County zoned for residential use, including the residential portions of Planned Development districts, or within 2,000 feet of a church, school, child care facility, or public recreation area. A second buffer applies between adult businesses themselves: no Adult Use may be established within 500 feet of any other Adult Use.

The code specifies exactly how those distances are measured, from property line to property line, along the shortest straight-line distance between the two parcels, regardless of the actual travel route between them. 4 also makes clear that meeting the spacing rule never authorizes an otherwise illegal business; nothing in the section permits an activity prohibited by county ordinance, or by Florida or federal law, including material that is obscene under Florida law. Because the buffers run from nearly every residential, religious, educational, childcare and recreational use in the county, only a narrow band of commercial and industrial land, reviewed case by case through the Special Use process, can realistically qualify.