Montgomery County, VA Building Safety: Childcare Center Rules (2026)

Montgomery County's zoning definitions section sets the line between a small, informal childcare arrangement and a regulated "day care center (child or adult)": the county defines the use as a licensed establishment operated as a commercial enterprise or public facility, running only part of the day, that provides care, protection and supervision for compensation to more than nine children, or more than four aged, infirm or disabled adults who mainly reside elsewhere. That numeric threshold, more than nine children or more than four qualifying adults, is what pulls a childcare operation into the zoning code's day care center use category rather than treating it as an incidental home activity.

0 space per employee, with no separate loading space required. That formula scales directly with the facility's licensed capacity, so a center approved for sixty children needs six parking spaces from the child-based calculation alone, on top of one space for every staff member on site. The parking table applies these standards uniformly across use categories in Sec 10-44, and the zoning administrator determines requirements for any use not specifically listed by comparing it to the closest listed use, which is how day care centers were assigned their own line rather than being lumped in with general commercial or institutional uses.

Because the definition ties directly to state licensure, an operation licensed to serve fewer children than the nine-child threshold does not trigger the day care center classification or its parking formula under this chapter.