Kalamazoo, MI Animal Ordinances: Veterinary Clinic Zoning (2026)

The Zoning Ordinance treats a veterinary business differently depending on whether it boards animals as a routine matter. Kalamazoo City Code § 12.3 defines Veterinary Clinic as a building, or portion of a building, used for treating house pets as outpatients only, without exterior or interior kennels or overnight lodging built into the use; overnight boarding is permitted only when necessary for unanticipated complications from treatment, covering veterinary offices and pet clinics. Veterinary Hospital, by contrast, is defined as a building or portion of a building used for treating house pets that can include exterior or interior kennels and overnight lodging as part of the use, covering veterinary offices and animal hospitals.

That distinction matters for site plan review: a clinic that starts routinely boarding pets overnight, or that builds exterior kennel runs, has functionally converted itself into a hospital use and must meet whatever standards apply to that classification instead. The City Planner reviews new veterinary uses against these definitions and enforces the Zoning Ordinance under § 10.1, with authority to conduct on-site inspections of a property where a violation is alleged. Because the general services category listed in Table 4.4-1 of § 50-4.4C(6) includes veterinarian services among examples of permitted general service uses, a veterinary practice is evaluated first as a general service and then held to the clinic-versus-hospital distinction in § 12.3 for its kennel and boarding features.

Misclassifying a hospital-type operation as a clinic, or running kennel facilities that exceed a clinic's outpatient-only definition, is a Zoning Ordinance violation subject to the same nuisance and civil-infraction remedies as any other use violation, under §§ 10.2 and 10.3.