Collier County, FL Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Sec. 26-161 of the Collier County Sexually Oriented Businesses Location and Regulation Ordinance (Ord. No. 91-83) sets three separate buffers measured property-line to property-line in a straight line, without regard to travel routes: 500 feet from any land zoned for residential use, 1,000 feet from a church or synagogue, school, child care center or public recreation area, and 1,500 feet from any other sexually-oriented business. Operating, or causing to be operated, a sexually-oriented business inside any of those buffers is a misdemeanor whether or not the business ever obtained a permit.

The community development services division administrator decides permit applications and checks compliance with the locational rules, applicable zoning, and the county's, Naples' and Everglades City's comprehensive plans (Sec. 26-157); the sheriff's office runs a criminal-history check on applicants (Sec. 26-157(b)) and can inspect the premises at any time it is open (Sec. 26-160). Sec. 26-154 makes the ordinance apply in both the incorporated and unincorporated county, overriding conflicting zoning. Businesses lawfully operating before September 3, 1991 that fall inside a buffer became nonconforming uses with a 365-day wind-down period, extendable once by the division administrator if the owner shows the initial investment cannot be recouped in time (Sec.

26-161(f)-(g)). A later-arriving church, school or residential use cannot retroactively make an already-permitted business nonconforming (Sec. 26-161(h)). The ordinance separately treats motels and hotels that rent rooms for under ten hours as presumptively sexually-oriented (Sec. 26-162).