Chandler, AZ Business Licensing & Operations: Tattoo & Body Modification (2026)

Zoning Code § 35-3202 lists the uses allowed by right in the City Center District (CCD), the special downtown overlay bounded by San Marcos Place, Arizona Place, Buffalo Street, Boston Street and Arizona Avenue between Chandler Boulevard and Buffalo Street. ' The same subsection separately bars dry cleaners and laundromats from the district. Because § 35-3203 lists the uses that can be approved only through a discretionary use permit, and tattoo/body-piercing establishments appear in neither the by-right list nor the use-permit list, there is no path within the CCD to obtain approval for one, the prohibition in § 35-3202(E) is absolute for this district, not merely a permit hurdle.

The restriction traces to the CCD's founding purpose in § 35-3200: the district exists to protect 'specialty retail, cultural, dining, entertainment, and other storefront businesses traditional to a downtown setting' built around the City's historic town-site, and the Council excluded uses it judged incompatible with that character, including body-piercing and tattoo parlors alongside drive-thru restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores. Outside the roughly six-block CCD boundary, Chandler's other commercial zoning districts do not carry this exclusion, so a tattoo studio proposing to locate elsewhere in the city is regulated as an ordinary business subject to standard commercial zoning and business licensing, not this Article XXXII prohibition.