Lakewood, WA Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

LMC Chapter 5.16 makes it unlawful to conduct, manage, or operate an adult cabaret without a valid City license, and separately unlawful for any entertainer or manager to work in one without holding their own license (LMC 5.16.020). Applicants and their control persons must submit fingerprints, photographs, a five-year criminal history, and a floor plan showing the stage and performance areas, and the City runs the application through Police, Fire, and Planning and Public Works before issuing a license within 35 calendar days (LMC 5.16.040).

No license goes to anyone under 21 (18 if no liquor is served), and no person or entity may hold more than one adult cabaret or sexually oriented business on the same or adjacent parcel except as a nonconforming use that cannot expand (LMC 5.16.030). Operating standards require the performance stage to sit at least 18 inches high and eight feet from patrons, ban direct tipping of entertainers, and bar operation between 2:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. (LMC 5.16.050). Land use compounds the licensing rules: Lakewood's Sexually Oriented Business Overlay (SOBO), created at LMC 18A.50.250, confines all sexually oriented businesses to mapped overlay areas from Ordinance 358, and any new SOB must locate at least 1,000 feet from any SOB that lawfully existed before the new application, measured building to building (LMC 18A.50.260). New SOB business license applications are denied outright unless the premises sits in a SOBO (LMC 18A.50.251(B)).