Opinion ID: 3204490
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Child Day-Care Centers

Text: The UDO defines “Child Day-Care” as: administering to the needs of infants, toddlers, preschool children and school children outside of school hours by persons other than their parents or guardians, custodians or relatives by blood, marriage, adoption, for any part of the 24 hour day in a place or residence other than the child’s own home. PID 1025. Child Day Care may be provided at a permanent residence or other location: Child Day-Care Center and Type A Home: means any place in which child day-care is provided, with or without compensation, for 13 or more children at one time, or any place that is not the permanent residence of the licensee or administrator in which child day-care is provided, with or without compensation, for seven to 12 children at one time. In counting children for the purpose of this ordinance, any children under six years of age who are related to a licensee, administrator, or employee and who are on the premises of the center shall be counted. Child Day-Care Home and Type B Home: means a permanent residence of the provider in which child day-care services are provided for one to six children at one time and in which no more than three children may be under two years of age at one time. In counting children for the purpose of this ordinance, any children under six years of age who are related to the provider and who are on the premises of the Type B home shall be counted. A Type B family day-care home does not include a residence in which the needs of children are administered to, if all of the children are siblings of the same immediate family and the residence is the home of the siblings. PID 1026. No. 14-3469 Tree of Life Christian Schools v. City of Upper Arlington Page 22 TOLCS’s reliance on the testimony of Senior Planning Officer Gibson and Robert Weiler, one of the City’s experts, to support that child day-care centers are similarly situated to its 660-student school because some centers would not maximize tax revenue to the City, is unavailing. Both Gibson and Weiler testified or averred that, in keeping with the UDO’s description of ORC zoning as including “services,” day-care centers were permitted as ancillary, complementary services in support of primary uses like offices, not because they generate significant tax revenue for the City in and of themselves. Similarly, coffee and barber shops are permitted uses in the ORC as ancillary uses.10 Weiler explained: Although daycares are not significant revenue producers, daycares compliment [sic] a commercial use by providing child supervision for employees in the area. In addition, the surveyed daycares in the city of Upper Arlington serve only between 40 to 130 children. Additionally, having built and owned daycares including a current interest in a daycare located on Sawmill Road in Columbus, few daycares are in excess of 10,000 SF as compared to [] school[s] that are routinely substantially larger. PID 1765. A 600-student K-12 school is not an ancillary service for the convenience and support of the employees who work in the area’s offices and commercial establishments TOLCS also asserts that day-care centers are proper comparators because some are large and licensed to accept as many as 1,000 children. Appellant Br. 12–13, n.4. It relies on two 10 UDO § 5.01(B) provides that only uses designated as permitted shall be allowed as a matter of right in a zoning district and any not so designated shall be prohibited . . . PID 2008. Schools are not designated as permitted in the ORC and are thus prohibited. ORC uses designated as permitted include banks, business and professional offices, corporate data centers, hotels and motels, hospitals, insurance carriers, outpatient surgery centers, periodicals and book publishing, research and development in information or medical technologies, survey research firms, barber shops and beauty parlors, and coffee shops. Expressly prohibited ORC uses include adult book stores, adult motion-picture theaters, amusement arcades, animal boarding, automotive service establishments, bowling alleys, candy stores, pool or billiard rooms, department stores, drug stores, dry-cleaning shops, fast-food restaurants, funeral homes, grocery and supermarket stores, laundromats, liquor stores, massage parlors, meat and fruit markets, motor-vehicle wash facilities, movie theaters, night clubs, pharmacies, publishing, radio and TV studios, skating rinks, soda fountains, variety stores, and tattoo parlor or body-piercing studios. No. 14-3469 Tree of Life Christian Schools v. City of Upper Arlington Page 23 exhibits, the first11 of which lists six day-care centers located in Arizona, Missouri, Kansas, and South Carolina that “care for children outside of school hours” and have capacity to serve from 416 to 965 children. The second exhibit consists of charts listing the twenty-five largest day-care centers in Ohio, which have capacities to serve from 282 to 467 children. But TOLCS points to no day-care facilities in the City or the immediate area. The size of the six day-care centers in four states far from Ohio seems no more relevant than the size of day-care centers in Europe. Similarly, the list of the largest day-care centers in Ohio provides no information about the communities they serve, other than their names. The City is entitled to devise a master plan and ordinances that take into account the size of the community and its actual experience with commercial and other users of land. Additionally, most of the twenty-five largest Ohio day-care centers TOLCS offered are named either “school,” “learning center,” “child development center,” “head start,” or “children’s center,” suggesting that the facilities provide both day-care and schooling. Assuming these centers would have qualified as child day-care centers permitted under the UDO, TOLCS failed to present evidence that any day-care comparator seeking to locate in the City’s ORC would serve anywhere near the 660 students TOLCS serves (it is uncontroverted that the largest day-care center in the City served 130 children). TOLCS’s proposed 660-student K-through-12 school would constitute a much more intensive use than a day-care center by virtue of its size, the age range of its students, and the traffic and noise it would generate during peak times and during after-school and weekend activities. In sum, TOLCS failed to show that the day-care comparators are similarly situated with respect to the accepted zoning criteria, and are no more consistent with office use, research use, supporting commercial activities, and supporting, ancillary, services than TOLCS.