Roanoke, VA Building Safety: Childcare Center Rules (2026)

2-408 of Roanoke's zoning ordinance applies supplemental space and safety standards to child day care centers, but only to those not licensed by the Virginia Department of Social Services; state-licensed centers are governed instead by the Commonwealth's own facility standards. For an unlicensed center, subsection (b)(1) sets a minimum designated common floor area of 35 square feet per child, calculated against the total number of children the center intends to accommodate. That common floor area is defined narrowly: it includes only the space where children sleep, eat, receive instruction, or play, and it excludes offices, hallways, restrooms, kitchen areas, closets, and other storage areas, so a center cannot pad its capacity calculation with non-program square footage.

An applicant must submit a floor plan drawn to scale identifying the common floor area as part of any zoning application for the use. Subsection (b)(2) separately requires that whenever a center provides an outdoor play area, that area must be fenced to provide a safe enclosure; the section does not set a minimum outdoor square footage per child, only the fencing requirement once an outdoor area exists. 2-523, in addition to whatever building and fire code requirements apply to the structure itself.