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

§ 317-23F places "gasoline stations, auto or truck rental establishments, used car lots, vehicle repair garages and car washes" in the list of conditional uses permitted in the M-1 and M-2 Zones, Passaic's industrial districts, and nowhere else. The section, last amended in 2003, layers on real siting hurdles even inside those zones: no part of the lot may sit within 1,000 feet, measured along the street, of a school or school playground, a hospital of at least 15 beds, a church, a 100-seat theater, any place of assembly holding 100 or more people, an athletic field or park, a firehouse, or another existing gas station, rental establishment, car wash or repair garage.

The minimum lot area is 10,000 square feet, and where the use adjoins a residential lot it must be screened by an eight-foot evergreen hedge or a six-foot decorative fence, at the reviewing board's discretion. Separately, § 317-10 defines "home occupation or home profession" as a closed list of trades a resident may run from a dwelling, artist, music or dance instruction limited to one student, physician, lawyer, architect, clergyman, accountant, engineer, licensed real estate or insurance broker, and rideshare driving, and expressly excludes trades like beauty parlors, tattoo parlors and animal care facilities from qualifying even though they aren't auto repair.

Vehicle repair is not on the home-occupation list at all, and any home occupation is capped at 35% of the dwelling's floor area with no exterior sign of commercial use, which rules out a home garage bay operation on its face. Combined, the two sections leave no path for residential auto repair: the trade is a conditional industrial use requiring a 10,000-square-foot lot and board approval, not something that can be layered into a home occupation permit.