Birmingham, AL Animal Ordinances: Veterinary Clinic Zoning (2026)

Veterinary clinics, kennels, dog training, and boarding facilities are a permitted use in the M-1A General Industrial District under item 14 of the district's use regulations, and Birmingham's M-1 Light Industrial District lists the same use, grouped with dairy operations, as item 9. Neither use requires a special exception in those industrial zones; it is allowed by right, like the district's other wholesaling, testing-lab, and light-manufacturing uses. What does require extra approval is any outdoor component. b of the M-1A use list requires an operator adding outside kennels or dog runs to submit an overall site development plan for review and approval by the Zoning Advisory Committee before any grading, clearing, site improvement, or permit is issued, and it flatly bars outside kennels or dog runs within 1,000 feet of a residential zone district regardless of the plan submitted.

a gives the Zoning Board of Adjustment authority to limit the type, area, and height of any outside storage or run adjacent to a residential or agricultural district and to require screening by walls, fences, berms, shrubs, or trees. A veterinary practice that wants to locate inside a purely residential or commercial district instead of M-1 or M-1A has no listed path in those use tables and would need a rezoning, not a variance, to operate there.