Monterey, CA Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Section 38-33(I) opens by explaining the city's rationale for regulating adult businesses: concentrating them degrades surrounding neighborhoods, and locating them near places minors frequent risks exposing children to adult material, so the City Council chose dispersal rather than outright prohibition. Paragraph (2) implements that policy with three separate 1,000-foot buffers measured from the adult business: no adult bookstore or adult movie theater may sit within 1,000 feet of any R district, within 1,000 feet of a public or private school, a religious assembly facility that runs religious education classes for minors, or a park and recreation facility, or within 1,000 feet of any other adult business.

Paragraph (3) adds a separate content rule barring any adult business from displaying or exhibiting material depicting specified anatomical areas or specified sexual activities so that it is visible from outside the building, regardless of spacing compliance. adult bookstore and the Nuart Theatre adult movie theater, both at 2116 North Fremont Street, letting them continue even if nonconforming to the buffers, but only until the use is discontinued for 90 or more consecutive days, after which reopening requires full compliance with every current requirement. Adult businesses are separately barred from mixed-use developments altogether under § 38-33(G)(3)(a), so the spacing rules apply only to their own free-standing commercial sites.