Rochester, NY Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Chapter 98, adopted by Ordinance No. 2000-300, opens with 21 legislative findings on the 'secondary effects' of adult businesses, citing case law such as City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres and local Police Department reports of prostitution tied to body-rub parlors, which the Council used to justify banning sexual encounter centers and adult hotels/motels outright while licensing the rest. Section 98-3 classifies licensed businesses as adult retail store, adult arcade, adult cabaret or adult movie theater, one classification per license. Section 98-4A makes it unlawful to operate any of these without a City-issued sexually oriented business license, to employ an unlicensed performer who appears nude or seminude, or to leave the business open without a licensed manager on duty for an adult cabaret.

Section 98-11 sets the annual license fee on a floor-space scale: $425 for up to 2,400 square feet and $475 above that, plus $50 for a manager or employee license and $10 to replace a lost license. Zoning under Section 120-148 layers on distance rules: adult arcades, cabarets, movie theaters and retail stores must sit at least 1,000 feet from any 'protected use' (such as schools, places of worship or day-care centers, which themselves must be 1,000 feet from an existing sexually oriented business), at least 500 feet from any residential district, and at least 1,000 feet from any other sexually oriented business, with location tables permitting them only in the M-1 Industrial District and barring them from the C-1, C-2 and C-3 commercial districts outright.