Doral, FL Animal Ordinances: Veterinary Clinic Zoning (2026)

Section 68-555 of the Doral Code lists the permitted and prohibited uses for the Downtown Mixed Use district, which covers the city's downtown core under Chapter 68, Article V, Division 3. While the DMU district is built to allow business/retail, office and residential uses in a flexible mix, including hotel and hospitality uses, subsection (2) carves out a specific list of uses the city has determined are not permitted anywhere in the district. Veterinary clinics are named directly on that list alongside big box retail stores, industrial uses, adult entertainment uses, boat sales, fortunetellers and astrologers, funeral homes, wholesale greenhouses and nurseries, laundry and dry cleaning plants, motor vehicle repair facilities, motor vehicle service centers, pawnshops, and tattoo parlors.

The prohibition applies regardless of how the veterinary use is packaged: a stand-alone animal hospital, a clinic attached to a pet store, or a mobile veterinary office based downtown would all fall under the same ban because the code does not distinguish by clinic format, only by use category. This means a veterinarian seeking to open a practice inside Doral's downtown core cannot obtain a business tax receipt or certificate of use for that address regardless of the size of the operation, and the planning and zoning department will reject a site plan application listing a veterinary clinic as a proposed use in DMU.

Veterinary practices are instead directed toward the city's other commercial and mixed-use zoning districts outside the downtown core, where the use compatibility tables in the Land Development Code govern whether a veterinary clinic is a permitted, conditional or prohibited use for that specific district.