Millcreek, PA Home Business: Zoning & Home Occupation Permits (2026)

The Millcreek Township Code defines Home Occupation in § 145-11 as an accessory use of a service character customarily conducted within a dwelling by the residents, not meeting all standards of a No-Impact Home-Based Business, which is clearly secondary to the use of the dwelling for living purposes and does not change the character of the dwelling. The definition then lists what counts. The office of a physician, surgeon, dentist, architect, lawyer or other professional person, each with not more than one paid assistant, is a home occupation.

Instruction in violin, piano or other individual musical instruments, limited to a single person at a time, also qualifies. Dressmakers, watchmakers, milliners, seamstresses, typists and others who offer skilled services to clients, are not professionally engaged in the purchase or sale of economic goods and have not more than one paid assistant can be deemed home occupations. The excluded list is just as specific: dancing instruction, band instrument instruction in groups, Personal, Business and Professional Services, Funeral Homes, Continuing Care Facilities and retail sales establishments or businesses of any kind not listed in the first clarification do not qualify.

The line between the two tiers is the No-Impact Home-Based Business definition. That lighter category allows no employees other than family members residing in the dwelling, no display or sale of retail goods, no outside appearance of a business use including parking, signs or lights, and no equipment creating noise, vibration, glare, fumes or odors detectable in the neighborhood. It must stay entirely within the dwelling and cannot occupy more than 25% of the habitable floor area. A business that cannot meet those limits has to fit the Home Occupation definition instead. Section 145-57 then adds the operating conditions for a Home Occupation.