Here’s another problem in the Capital Region you can chalk up to the August flood: Additional delays in the city-parish permit review process.
For much of the past two years, developers and builders have been complaining about lengthy delays in the permit review process, a situation caused by a lack of manpower in the permits office. The problem has gotten worse since the flood, as the number of applicants seeking demolition and construction permits has increased.
What’s more, a plan that sought to address the problem and speed up the review process has been shelved for the time being.
“We were making progress on it,” says Larry Bankston, executive director of the Baton Rouge Growth Coalition, which represents the development community and was drafting the plan. “But since the flood we haven’t done anything with it because they’re so busy over there and we didn’t want to pester anybody.”
The plan was actually a new policy that would require the city-parish to process commercial plan applications within 21 days and residential plan applications within seven days—provided the applicants had already hired a third-party reviewer to separately do basic building plan reviews.
Parish law allows builders to hire third-party reviewers from among a list of state-certified engineers to review building plans to make sure the plans comply with basic building code requirements.
But few developers have taken advantage of the ordinance because the city-parish was taking so long to do its part of the review process—making sure building plans comply with things like local zoning codes and parking requirements.
The Growth Coalition was working with the city-parish Department of Development on the language of the proposed policy. Bankston says the department didn’t like the mandated deadlines. Development Director Carey Chauvin says developers didn’t want to pay an extra fee for expedited plan review.
Still, both sides say they were nearing a compromise when the effort got put on hold. Now, with the mayoral and Metro Council elections just a month away, the Growth Coalition is looking to the next administration to address what has been one of the coalition’s biggest frustrations for too long.
In the meantime, Chauvin says his department is working long hours and plenty of overtime to try to keep up with the mounting number of permit applications.
“There is a lot of effort being made in house,” he says. “They’re working Saturday and Sunday just to get caught up from this storm event. We’re trying to make sure folks don’t get burned out.”
—Stephanie Riegel
