Wauwatosa, WI Animal Ordinances: Veterinary Clinic Zoning (2026)

040 places veterinary practices in the "Animal Services" use category, describing "Veterinary" uses as covering pet clinics, dog and cat hospitals and animal hospitals. 030 use table gives veterinary clinics broader by-right access than pet grooming or boarding: a permitted designation runs across the CO, C1 and C2 commercial districts and both the M1 and M2 industrial districts, plus the SP-RP special-purpose district and the MID-TRN and MID-MIX mixed-use districts, meaning a vet clinic can open without a conditional use permit anywhere from a neighborhood commercial strip to heavy industrial land.

Like every other Animal Services use type, veterinary clinics carry a prohibited designation in all six residential districts, GR, SR, NR, MR, LDM and MDM, so a vet cannot practice out of a house zoned residential. The code separately defines "Shelter or Boarding Kennel" as an animal-care use that falls outside the practice of veterinary medicine under Wis. Stat. 02(6), which keeps a straightforward veterinary hospital from being pulled into the more restrictive boarding-kennel use table row that requires a conditional use permit in C2 and is confined to M1 and M2 by right; a clinic that adds significant overnight boarding beyond veterinary treatment risks being reclassified into that stricter category.