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

37 of the Zoning Ordinance makes tattoo studios and body piercing studios a supplemental use requiring City review before they open. An applicant must submit an application that the Zoning Administrator, or a designee, reviews and approves so the City can issue a Zoning Permit for the specific location; the studio must also adhere to all applicable state and county laws, codes, ordinances, rules, and regulations governing body art. On siting, the ordinance draws a 1,000-foot separation ring, measured in a straight line from the lot line, around three things: any other tattoo studio or body piercing studio, any adult business as defined in Article 8 of the Zoning Ordinance, and any school as defined in that same article.

A new studio cannot locate inside any of those three 1,000-foot buffers. The ordinance carves out one specific exception: the studio-to-studio and studio-to-adult-business separation rule does not prevent a tattoo studio and a body piercing studio from operating within the same building, so a combined shop offering both services in one location is permitted even though two separately-owned studios could not sit that close together elsewhere. Because the buffer is measured from the lot line rather than the building wall, it applies even to studios proposed on large parcels where the building itself sits farther back from the property line than the wall-based buffers used for marijuana dispensaries elsewhere in the same Article 3 supplemental use standards.