Newark, OH Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Chapter 807 of the Newark Code of Ordinances, enacted by the City Council as Ord. 01-45 on 11-5-01, makes a sexually oriented business license a precondition to opening. The Economic Development Director, or a designee, serves as the Sexually Oriented Business Use Commissioner, who rules on applications, inspects premises, and suspends or revokes licenses. Applications go to the Commissioner in writing on a prescribed form, with ten identical copies and a nonrefundable $100 administrative processing fee. The application must name the owners and officers, give the street address and legal description, identify each fee simple owner of the premises, and include a diagram of doors, windows, stages, performance areas and restrooms.

The Commissioner refers each file to city departments and must finish within thirty days; if the Commissioner neither issues nor denies within thirty days of a properly completed application, the license is deemed issued. Issuance requires that nobody named in the application was convicted of a specified criminal activity within the five years before applying, that no taxes, fees or fines connected to a sexually oriented business are overdue, and that the premises meet building, health, safety and Newark Zoning Code requirements. A license runs one year, must be displayed in plain view, and renewal applications are due at least forty-five days before expiration.

Operating rules in Section 807.13 bar opening on any Ohio or federal holiday and between 12:00 midnight and 9:00 a.m., with a carve-out for establishments holding an Ohio liquor license, whose live dancing and adult films still stay inside the restricted hours. Animals other than seeing eye dogs are barred.

Location is controlled in Chapter 1280 of the zoning code. No adult entertainment business can be established in the listed commercial, office, residential, planned unit and downtown districts, nor within 500 feet of the listed residential districts. The General Industrial District allows them only through conditional use approval from the Board, and then not within 1,500 feet of another adult entertainment establishment, a school, library or teaching facility attended by persons under eighteen, a park or recreational facility, or a place of worship.