Rock Hill, SC Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

A, part of the ordinance current as of the June 22, 2026 update. Rock Hill frames the section as content-neutral zoning rather than a ban: the Ordinance states its purpose is to regulate the secondary effects of adult businesses, not to restrict access to constitutionally protected material. The operative rule is a 1,000-foot separation requirement, measured lot line to lot line, that keeps an adult entertainment use away from seven categories of sensitive use at once: any other adult entertainment use, existing residential uses, undeveloped residential zoning districts, undeveloped residentially designated portions of a Master Planned (MP) district, religious institutions, day care and preschool uses, K-12 schools of any level, and public parks.

Because the buffer runs against undeveloped residential land as well as occupied homes, a site that looks clear today can still be blocked by a future subdivision on adjoining vacant residentially zoned land. The section also limits scale directly: no more than one sexually oriented business may occupy a single building or lot, so a single storefront cannot be split to host multiple adult businesses to get around the separation math, and an existing business cannot add adult entertainment as a side use, since the Ordinance bars establishing it as an accessory use to another business.

Adult entertainment operators must also comply with the separate prostitution and nudity provisions in the City's general Code of Ordinances on top of this zoning standard.