Mebane, NC Building Safety: Childcare Center Rules (2026)

Once a daycare grows past five clients, Mebane's Unified Development Ordinance stops treating it as an accessory use and regulates it instead as a principal use in its own right. Section 4-7.6(G) allows a childcare center serving 6 to 12 clients in the R-20, R-15, R-12, R-10, R-8 and R-6 districts, provided the facility carries at least 1,200 square feet of outdoor play area, or more if state licensing requires it, and that play area is surrounded by a sturdy fence at least four feet high, a lower bar than the six-foot fence required for a five-or-fewer home daycare.

The center's site plan has to show its points of access and egress, its internal traffic pattern, and the location and extent of its outdoor recreation areas, on top of the standard site plan requirements in Appendix A. Screening from adjoining residential uses or residentially-zoned lots is required under UDO § 6-4. The center cannot operate between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m., the same curfew that applies to the smaller home-based version, and any facility on a site larger than one acre must have vehicular access from a collector or higher capacity street rather than a purely local road.

Whatever N.C. licensing requirements apply to a center of that size still apply on top of these city standards, and centers serving 13 or more clients face this same list of conditions under § 4-7.6(G.1) in a wider set of nonresidential districts.