AN AMENDMENT to Madison’s zoning ordinance requires certain businesses to obtain conditional approval for operation after that city’s aldermen voted for the change.

“We moved certain uses from permitted outright to conditional,” Alan Hoops, Madison’s director of community development, said. “These uses described in the ordinance prior to the amendment were allowed in these districts as outright uses, meaning you didn’t have to get any special use for approval.”

The amendment, Hoops said, “merely requires they be conditional uses instead of permitted outright for reasons of just having a little more control over where these uses are placed to protect residential property value.”

The change is set to become law February 1.

Changes to the city’s zoning ordinance require owners of such businesses as bowling alleys, skating rinks, liquor stores, tattoo parlors, body piercing shops, check cashing places and pawn shops to appear before aldermen and obtain a conditional-use permit.

“It deals with the use of the structure,” Hoops said. “Uses were permitted outright in the city of Madison in C-2 and C-3 zoning classifications. They now have been moved to a conditional use in C-2 requiring a public hearing and board of aldermen approval.”

Hoops said “most of the vacant commercial land” in Madison is zoned C-2 and that no specific situation prompted the zoning change.

IN RIDGELAND, that city’s zoning ordinances are similar to Madison’s laws, Alan Hart, director of community development, said.

“We have conditional- and permitted-use classifications in our zoning ordinances,” he said. “We have certain other criteria that have to be met for certain uses.”

For example, Hart said, skating rinks and bowling alleys in Ridgeland require conditional-use permits in C-4 classifications. Many other retailers are zoned C-2.

Zoning boards in both cities must approve conditional-use applications before boards of aldermen can accept or deny the permits.

In Jackson, liquor stores are zoned C-2, and bowling alleys, body piercing facilities, check cashing places, liquor stores, pawn shops and tattoo parlors are zoned C-3. None require conditional-use permits, according to the city’s Web site.