Stafford Township, NJ Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Chapter 176 of the Stafford Township Code regulates sexually oriented businesses through location and design rules; the chapter prints no separate permit process. Section 176-2 defines the category as an adult arcade, adult bookstore or adult video store, adult cabaret, adult motel, adult motion-picture theater or adult theater. Section 176-1 states the purpose as minimizing the adverse secondary effects of these businesses without restricting or denying access by adults to sexually oriented material protected by the First Amendment.

Section 176-3A allows a sexually oriented business only on a county road within the Local Business (LB) Zone, tied to § 211-26E of the zoning chapter. Section 176-3B makes it a violation to operate, cause to be operated or allow to be operated one within 1,000 feet of a place of worship, a school (public or private) or school bus stop, any other sexually oriented business, any residential use or zone, a public park or playground, a hospital, or a child-care center. Under § 176-3C distances are measured in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures or objects, from the nearest portion of the building or structure used as part of the premises to the nearest property line of the protected use. Under § 176-3D a business lawfully operating as a conforming use does not become nonconforming when a place of worship, school, public area, residential district or residential lot is later located within 1,000 feet.

Section 176-3 adds operating rules. No person under 18 can be on the premises for any purpose, no display visible from the exterior can contain material of a sexually oriented nature, and the business must meet the design standards and development requirements of the Township's ordinances. Section 176-4 requires a perimeter buffer at least 50 feet wide of plantings, fence or other physical divider along the outside of the perimeter, sufficient to impede the view of the interior of the premises.