McCracken County, KY Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

The Fiscal Court's zoning code, § 150.037, lists eight regulated use types, including adult amusement arcades, adult book stores, adult motion picture and stage-show theaters, cabarets, and commercial sexual entertainment centers, and restricts all of them to the Commercial zone under § 150.037(D)(1). New establishments cannot locate within 1,000 feet of another lawfully operating adult entertainment use, within 1,000 feet of a UR or RR district, a house of worship, a licensed day care, a school, or a public park (§ 150.037(D)(2)-(3)), and cannot site where 75% or more of tracts within a 400-foot radius are residential in character (§ 150.037(D)(4)).

Screening must be at least six feet high and 90% opaque along all adjacent property, including the street side (§ 150.037(F)). Separately, Chapter 96 regulates sexually oriented businesses as a licensed use category: § 96.04 bars sexually explicit signage or displayed merchandise visible from outside, requires a monitoring employee stationed to watch the entrance at all times the business is open, bars anyone under 18 from entering or working there, and closes every sexually oriented business except an adult motel between 1:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Section 96.08 requires two years of employment records (name, birth date, address, termination date, Social Security number) to be kept on every employee. The county's stated intent, per § 150.037(A), is to prevent concentration of these uses and protect neighborhood character, not to regulate content.