Tippecanoe County, IN Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Section 4-11-5, ADULT ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESSES, sets a flat 500-foot spacing rule rather than an outright countywide ban. Establishment of an adult entertainment business "is prohibited if that business is within 500' of" three categories: another adult entertainment business, the lot line of a church, public or parochial school, library, public park, county courthouse square, city hall or other public building, or the boundary line of any residential or rural zone. The ordinance is specific about how that 500 feet is measured: business-to-business distance runs "in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures or objects, from the closest lot line of each business," and the distance to a protected use such as a school or church runs the same way, from the adult business's closest lot line to the nearest lot line of the protected use or the nearest boundary of the residential or rural zone.

Where an adult entertainment business sits inside an integrated shopping center, only the leased space it actually occupies counts toward that closest-lot-line measurement, not the whole center. Because the spacing rule reaches every residential and rural zone boundary countywide, in addition to schools, churches, libraries, parks and government buildings, it functions as a de facto siting map: a viable location must clear 500 feet from all of those uses at once, which narrows the field to the county's commercial and industrial zones farthest from residential development.

An operator must obtain an improvement location permit from the Administrative Officer before opening, and site plan review confirms the 500-foot measurements before that permit issues.