Atlanta to streamline permit process for residential, commercial construction

For more than a decade, Atlanta residents and businesspeople have complained that the city’s process for inspecting construction projects and dishing out permits is an inefficient, headache-inducing mess. Files get lost, an alphabet’s soup of departments make conflicting demands and projects are delayed for months.

Lost, too, is job-creating potential in a metro area grappling with double-digit unemployment.

The undermanned Office of Buildings needs more inspectors on the ground, according to a report released this week by the city’s planning department. Permit processing must be centralized, as it is now inefficiently scattered across four different areas, the report notes.

Atlanta is seeking these fixes at a time when revenue generated by building permits is slumping. Last fiscal year the city took in roughly $4 million from building permits after taking in more than $6 million each of the previous two years.

If the city chooses to increase the cost of building permits to fund the improvements, contractors, developers and renovators told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that they would be willing to pay higher fees for better service.

“This is one of those things that is truly broken and needs to be fixed,” said Mike Dunham, executive vice president of Georgia’s chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America.

Permitting delays have dulled Atlanta’s reputation as a city that can get things done. There are few hard estimates of how much the delays have cost Atlanta in jobs or tax dollars, or how many companies have looked at Charlotte, Miami or Cobb County instead. But there are plenty of strong feelings.

Benjamin Rhoades, owner of The Bookhouse Pub and MJQ Concourse, is trying to open a restaurant in East Atlanta, but he’s losing patience with tens of thousands of dollars in costs for parking lot work and tough arborist rules. He said he might look outside Atlanta for his next project.

“At this point in my life, I’d like to be near the beach,” he said. In Charleston, you can submit a permit proposal online, and the staff “will call you right back,” he said.

In his inaugural address in January 2010, Mayor Kasim Reed promised to completely reform the city’s permitting process within one year. The permitting process should not be a source of frustration, “but rather a source of growth,” he said.Reed is about nine months late in implementing his promise of reform . But, Atlanta’s permitting problems predate Reed. In 2005, Atlanta commissioned a study that showed building permits that took as little as four weeks to deliver in other metro Atlanta cities could take up to 40 weeks in Atlanta..

One major solution this time around is to allow the city’s Office of Buildings to track a permit from beginning to end.

“We want our customers to understand that, in this new arrangement, we genuinely want their business,” said Don Rosenthal, director of the Office of Buildings.

Right now, four different inspectors have to visit a site to inspect plumbing, electrical systems, heating and cooling and structural inspections. By contrast, Gwinnett County, Cobb County, Salt Lake City, Reno and Montgomery, Ala. have already combined some or all of those functions.

“I am supportive of any legislation that will improve customer service,” Council member Yolanda Adrean said. “But from a financial point of view, I don’t want any surprises.”

With building permit revenue down so drastically, the city is looking to raise fees dramatically to fund improvements.

Council member Ivory Lee Young Jr. said he is worried the city will not have enough inspectors, even after the reforms. Only four inspector positions are scheduled to be added at the Office of Buildings. “We’re asking the inspectors to do a whole lot,” Young said. “It seems like we’re betting the whole house that a few can do the work of many.”

Atlanta’s 2005 study gave the city a blueprint for reforming its permit process: an 88-page report from consulting firm Bain & Co., benchmarking the city’s permit process against Alpharetta, Cobb County, Denver and Charlotte.

The report showed Decatur’s permitting process took 4-6 weeks, Paulding County’s took 6-8 weeks and Gwinnett’s took 16-24 weeks. In Atlanta, it could stretch to 30-40 weeks.

Bain’s blueprint for changes “never got followed,” said David Bennett, senior policy advisor to Reed. Reform “ends up being a little bit harder than you think.”

Meanwhile, Cobb County boasts to incoming businesses that it can get them set up faster than any other county or city in the metro region. Cobb averages three to four weeks from start to end of the inspection and permitting process, said Rob Hosack, community development director.

“It’s a definite advantage,” he said.

For Alex Brounstein, owner of Grindhouse Killer Burgers, the proposed changes in Atlanta come too late to assuage the headache of trying to open his Piedmont Road restaurant.

“A nightmare -- probably the worst six months of my life,” he said. “It was just slow -- painfully, painfully slow. We could’ve done this project for half the cost if it wasn’t for the city.”

Reform is essential to making Atlanta competitive with its neighbors and far-flung cities in creating and keeping jobs, said Robert Broome, governmental affairs director of the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors.

“It’s very obvious that businesses want to be in Atlanta, but the fact of the matter is the Office of Buildings for quite a while has been inadequately resourced,” he said. “There comes a point where it becomes more enticing ... to look at other areas.”

Staff writer Rachel Tobin contributed to this article.

The City Council would have to authorize most of the proposed changes, which include: