Freehold Township, NJ Animal Ordinances: Veterinary Clinic Zoning (2026)

A(7) of the Land Use chapter lists the uses permitted by right in the PUD-1 Planned Unit Development-1 Zone, the mixed commercial, retail and residential district created in 2014 and amended in 2021 to help satisfy Freehold Township's third-round affordable housing obligation. That permitted-use list groups medical offices, walk-in medical centers, diagnostic and testing facilities, physical therapy offices, and veterinary hospitals and offices together as one category, meaning a veterinary hospital in PUD-1 does not need a use variance the way it would in a zone where it is not listed.

Site plan approval from the Planning Board is still required under Article VI before a veterinary hospital can open, covering access, parking, buffering and building design the same as for any other PUD-1 use. Wherever a veterinary hospital or veterinarian's office is a permitted use in the Township, the minimum parking table at Section 190-163 sets its specific off-street parking ratio separately from the general office or retail standards: veterinarian and veterinarian hospitals require six spaces per doctor or examination room, whichever is greater. That means a two-doctor, three-exam-room veterinary hospital must provide at least eighteen spaces, since the larger of the two counts controls.

Freehold Township's code does not carry a separate animal hospital or kennel zoning chapter outside these two cross-referenced provisions, so a prospective veterinary use elsewhere in the Township has to be checked against the permitted-use list for that specific zone rather than assumed.