home business
How much “business” is it permissable to do out of your own brownstone? Could one run, for instance, a design office from a residential bldg?
How much “business” is it permissable to do out of your own brownstone? Could one run, for instance, a design office from a residential bldg?
This depends completely on your zoning. In some residential areas you aren’t even allowed to have a home office where no client ever visits you. While other zoning areas allow something like a one person architecture or engineering office, and yet others allow any non-industrial use of a first floor, so long as the C of O allows it, this would allow something like a doctor’s office to be located in the neighborhood.
How much these things are enforced is a completely different matter. If there aren’t too many people coming and going, your neighbors are unlikely to complain.
I run my architecture office out of my apartment in Brooklyn and I believe that this is legal. I am only a one person office though…
Next door to me a guy is running a construction company out of the basement level apartment of a rowhouse and I am pretty sure that this is not legal. He stores his equipment in the back yard, cuts and grinds metal in the back yard, etc.
In the NYC building code there is a list of permitted use groups for each different zoning category – that is where you will find the legal answer to your question.
That’s a great question and am eager to hear what folks say. I live on a residential street but someone down the block runs a small business with several employees from their parlor floor. My guess is that the practical answer depends on your neighbors and how much traffic – foot or otherwise – it causes.