Kalamazoo, MI Home Business: Customer Traffic Restrictions (2026)

Section 50-4.5D(5)(h) sets Kalamazoo's client-traffic rules for a home-based business separately from its staffing and signage standards. Customers or clients can visit only during the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; a home occupation cannot receive walk-in business outside that 12-hour window. Within those hours, subsection (h)[1] caps ordinary visits at no more than two customers or clients at a given time. The code carves out one exception for instructional uses: a class such as art, music, cooking or fitness can host up to four clients at once without extra approval.

Once a class or any home occupation activity would draw five or more clients at a time, subsection (h)[2] requires a special use permit from the Planning Commission before it can operate at that scale. Subsection (i) addresses where those clients park, allowing customer parking off-street or on-street wherever parking is otherwise permitted, without a dedicated off-street lot requirement. Deliveries to the home occupation follow the same 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. window under subsection (j), and are limited to common residential delivery services rather than commercial freight.

An in-home day-care, addressed separately in subsection (k), is not governed by the two-client cap; a family day-care can serve up to six children and a group day-care seven to 12, with the group tier needing a special use permit and both tiers needing an active state license.