Bloomfield, NJ Business Licensing & Operations: Auto Repair on Residential Property (2026)

Section 497-48 of the Bloomfield Township Code, in the article on restricted activities in streets, has two prohibitions. First, no vehicle shall be parked or permitted to stand on any street for the purpose of sale. Second, no person shall clean any vehicle or repair the same in any street, except in case of emergency. The only exception printed is an emergency, so routine maintenance, a driveway-style oil change at the curb or a weekend repair on the street in front of a house is covered by the ban, and so is washing or cleaning the vehicle in the street.

The rule is about the street, not the lot. It does not by itself ban a resident from working on a vehicle on private property, and the Code text reviewed does not regulate residential car repair as a licensed business. Business conduct at home is governed by the home occupation conditions in the zoning chapter: a home occupation cannot involve retail sales on the site, cannot use equipment or processes that create noise, glare, fumes, odors or other nuisance factors detectable off the lot, and cannot subordinate the residential character of the neighborhood or the premises.

Two zoning rules in Chapter 315 bear on vehicles at home. In all residential zones, § 315-36 prohibits outdoor storage of items other than those customarily placed in courtyards and yards incidental to authorized residential use, and says that prohibition includes, without limitation, inoperable or unregistered motor vehicles. A project car waiting on blocks in the yard is therefore a zoning problem even where the repair itself is on private land. The off-street parking standards in § 315-30 add that parking areas shall be used solely for the parking of passenger automobiles, with no commercial repair work, service or storage of new or used motor vehicles, materials or merchandise.