Terrebonne Parish, LA Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

Sec. 28-79 of the Terrebonne Parish zoning ordinance regulates sexually oriented businesses, defined to include adult arcades, adult bookstores, adult cabarets, adult motels, adult theatres, escort agencies, and nude model studios, among other uses. The parish council's stated purpose is to prevent the negative secondary effects associated with these businesses without restricting access to constitutionally protected material. Within the zoned areas of Terrebonne Parish, Sec. 28-79(c) confines sexually oriented businesses to C-2 General Commercial Districts and bars them from operating within one thousand feet of a public park, public library, nonprofit educational museum, church, synagogue or other place of worship, public or private school, college or university, daycare center, preschool or kindergarten center, another sexually oriented business, or a structure containing one.

A separate one-thousand-foot buffer applies from any residential zoning district. Distances are measured in a straight line, without regard to intervening structures, from the nearest point of the business's structure to the nearest property line of the protected use, or from exterior wall to exterior wall between two sexually oriented businesses. A business lawfully operating as a conforming use is not made nonconforming if a protected use, such as a church or school, later locates within one thousand feet of it. A business already operating when the ordinance took effect but not meeting the spacing rules may continue as a nonconforming use at its existing site, but loses that status if it ceases operating or is discontinued for any period, and cannot be enlarged or altered.

Before a certificate of occupancy issues, the owner must sign a written statement verifying the business is being operated as a sexually oriented business under the section's definitions.