[Wonder Warthog]

"By the way, going back to your comments regarding your current company, is its corporate address a fifth-floor apartment, or are its premises correctly zoned? Does your current company have the required operating licenses for your local jurisdiction?"

No, but it "is" in a residential neighborhood. Quite legally under existing local zoning laws. And yes, we have all the necessary documentation needed.

One of the companies we work closely with is located in Houston. If you go to the corporate offices, you will find it is in the middle of a residential neighborhood. The owner bought several houses next door to a strip mall. The houses contain different parts of the company's operations, and the warehouse space of the "strip mall" contains the heavy manufacturing equipment. If you drive through, you will NEVER in a million years guess that a quite large and profitable business office existed there.

Here's a clue......"appearance isn't everything", in fact "looks can be deceiving".

[muawiyah]

Indianapolis is like that ~ you can get variances for anything. Way back years ago my father in law wanted to find a certain address where serious parts for some very serious Department of Defense satellites were manufactured.

It was a guy's garage not far from my folk's home.

It's called Work at Home. There are other cities like that where they foster small precision businesses.