Grant County, WA Business Licensing & Operations: Auto Repair on Residential Property (2026)

140 creates the Cottage Industry category for small-scale commercial or light-industrial activity on residential parcels, and its list of allowable uses names automobile repair directly alongside antique shops, art studios, blacksmith shops and furniture refinishing. The Administrative Official must find that the specific use can operate without substantial adverse impact on the residential environment and rural character of the vicinity before it is approved; the standard exists precisely because cottage industries run more intensively than a simple Home Occupation but do not rise to the level needing a Commercial or Industrial district.

140(c) layers on operating standards: the business must be owned and run by at least one full-time, bona fide resident living in a single-family home on the parcel, and it cannot employ more than four people on site at one time who live off the property, except in Rural Remote, Rural Urban Reserve and Agriculture zones, where the employee cap scales with structure size at one employee per 500 square feet. A new structure built for the repair shop is capped at 2,000 square feet in most districts, rising to as much as 12,000 square feet, or 1 percent of parcel size, in those same three rural zone categories.