Pro-Line’s Commercial Building Process—Vol. 3

In the first two posts of our commercial building process series, we looked at the key phases that we go through when building a commercial space. In today’s final blog post of the series, Mack explores the daunting phase of city permitting. Don’t worry—we can help!

Civil Engineer + City

Any commercial project has to have a full set of civil engineered site plans that lay out the building on the property. This deals with everything from elevation of the property, storm and water sewers, anything that needs to come to the building, where it’s located on the street you’re building on, and much more.

We work with you and a civil engineer to lay this out and put together a site map. The civil engineer will submit the first draft of the site map to the city with the specifications your building needs. The city typically has a 5-10 day turnaround for their first round of comments back to us. With the civil engineer, we will address any questions the city has brought back to us. This usually takes about a week, and once complete we submit a new draft to the city. If all questions have been answered, the city will usually approve the site map and send if off to planning and zoning.

Planning and Zoning Committee + City Council

We will then go in front of the planning and zoning committee to receive approval on the site plan based on what was submitted to them from the city. Once we get approval at this meeting, the plan will go to the city council. After approval is received from the city council, it goes to submission for a building permit.

Building Permit

Typically, you cannot even apply to get a building permit without having completed the steps with the city, planning and zoning, and the city council. Once you’ve received these approvals and get to this step, you will get a sign off on the site map and official approval at this point. Permitting is a lengthy process. It’s not as simple as walking into the courthouse and asking for a building permit; you have to go through all of these steps and at the end of the day it takes about 60-90 days to complete this phase.

Our Role

Permitting is something many of our clients aren’t familiar with and it can be a scary part of the building process. It is our job to facilitate this phase for our building projects so owners of businesses don’t have to worry about it. Some of our clients do like to be involved and go to these meetings; others prefer to have us handle it without them. It is completely your choice, but Pro-Line is more than familiar with the permitting process and is equipped to handle it on your behalf.

On the surface, the commercial building process can seem overwhelming, but finding the right partner can make it easy. If our process sounds ideal for your business, contact Pro-Line today. Our team is ready to work with you.