Consultant hired to help identify inefficiencies in city department responsible for approving permits

The city's regulatory department responsible for rubber stamping Austin development projects is undergoing a self-review.

Austin's Planning and Development Review Department hired an outside consultant in July to uncover inefficiencies in its building permit review process. The nine-month evaluation will examine the department's workload and organizational structure, PDRD Chief Administrative Officer Melissa Martinez said.

The department in July also proposed changing building permit review periods—not to be shorter but longer—to reflect actual wait times, PDRD Division Manager Kathy Haught said. The current review periods have been in effect since the 1980s or '90s, she said.

Any improvements to the process would be welcomed by Austin's development community, said Nancy McDonald, Real Estate Council of Austin director of governmental affairs, who admits such change would not occur overnight.

"The city wants to fix any problems—and everyone knows there are problems," McDonald said. "But like any large organization, you don't just a turn a ship around on a dime."

Reviewing the reviewers

San Diego–based Zucker Systems was hired by Austin to review PDRD procedures and staffing. As part of its evaluation, Zucker Systems will gain feedback from stakeholder groups such as RECA members, city boards and commissions.

Delays in the regulatory process prevent new developments from keeping up with demand, said McDonald, who expects her membership to be candid about its experiences submitting site plans and pulling building permits.

"Delays make projects more expensive, and the more expensive the project, the more expensive it is for the end user," she said.

Solutions that work in other cities may not be best for Austin's development review process, Zucker Systems founder Paul Zucker said during a city-hosted panel discussion in October. He suggested—before being awarded a contract to consult for the city—Austin's PDRD may be understaffed and its organizational function too large.

Growing cities such as Austin should consider a five-year follow-up evaluation of its development review process to track improvement, Zucker said.

Embracing the system

While RECA and other real estate organizations advocate for an improved development review process, many Austin planning and design firms benefit from having institutional knowledge of the city's complex building code.

Developers must overcome neighborhood and environmental concerns before gaining city approval, said Will Schnier, co-founder and CEO of Big Red Dog, an engineering consulting firm working on multiple projects citywide. While more complicated than some other Texas cities, Austin is not losing development because of its strict regulations, he said.

"It is an incredibly stunted system, but it protects Austin," Schnier said. "And the city review process will have no reason to change as long as we continue our population growth."

The Lamar Union shopping center, anchored by a renovated Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, is one such project that adhered to neighborhood concerns before satisfying development guidelines, said Eric Van Hyfte, a senior associate for BOKA Powell, the architecture and design firm that planned the 1 million-square-foot project. Neighborhood compatibility trumps other development demands, he said, including interest in building along main corridors such as South Lamar Boulevard.

Now accustomed to those rules, Van Hyfte said his firm has made a living in Austin from working within the city's rulebook rather than seeking variances on projects.

"If you were coming in from out of town doing your first project here, it would be very difficult," he said. "There's a lot of things Austin does that other cities don't do."

Unpermitted wait periods

Although city code mandates new commercial construction permit reviews to take no more than three weeks, the process normally takes up to six or seven weeks, Van Hyfte said. The city, however, claims the process takes closer to 30 days, according to Haught, a PDRD division manager. That is down from April when, according to a city memo, commercial reviews took an average of 35 days—still considerably longer than the 21-day turnaround required by city law.

Residential permit wait times are shorter—totaling two to three weeks by some estimates—although city code also calls for quicker response times—between two and seven days—on such projects. Home projects dealing with one of Austin's more obscure ordinances may wait as long as four to six months, said David Whitworth, an urban residential builder.

"I've been doing infill [residential development] for about 10 years, and I only recently declared myself marginally competent in the city's code, and I suspect I'm in the 95th percentile," Whitworth said. "You almost have to be overly involved down there to keep track of things."

Regulation delays can cause a residential project to take as long as two years from start to finish, he said, a wait time most real estate financiers are unwilling to back.

"We value predictability," McDonald said of RECA's membership. "Tell us what the rules are, and we'll do it. So if [increased permit review periods] add more certainty, we'll support that."