Things You Should Know When it comes to building something in the city of Philadelphia there are a few essential things you will need. Many of these essentials come from L&I, the Department of Licenses and Inspections. The key here is understanding what you will need, and how to get it. In addition to any Building or Zoning Permits you may need for your project, you may...
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Previously in this blog, we’ve mentioned the City of Philadelphia’s requests for additional information. Since we see a lot of these, we are going to create a catalogue of the requests as a reference guide. We hope that this will help our clients, design partners, and contractors better understand what information is most commonly missing from an application. (If you haven’t seen it before, it’s...
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Monday was my first day at Philadelphia Zoning. To say it was overwhelming would be putting it mildly. I have a BA in Urban Studies, but the training of a university degree doesn’t compare to the concrete knowledge I’ve obtained in my first week here. I knew from my studies that cities are the impetus of economic growth propelling places like Dubai from a dusty...
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Previously in this blog, we’ve mentioned the City of Philadelphia’s requests for additional information. Since we see a lot of these, we are going to create a catalogue of the requests as a reference guide. We hope that this will help our clients, design partners, and contractors better understand what information is most commonly missing from an application. (If you haven’t seen it before, it’s...
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When we started out at Philly Zoning, we got a version the same question every week: Where's my permit? Once someone gets started on a permitting project, they want to know how far along the permit is, and how they can check its progress. We give our clients weekly updates to answer that question, but we also think it might be helpful to provide an overview...
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Previously in this blog, we've mentioned the City of Philadelphia's requests for additional information. Since we see a lot of these, we are going to create a catalogue of the requests as a reference guide. We hope that this will help our clients, design partners, and contractors better understand what information is most commonly missing from an application. (If you haven't seen it before, it's...
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I cannot tell you how many of our clients run into issues with their General Contractor (or whatever party is in charge of applying-for and obtaining things on behalf of their client). Oftentimes, tracking down a physical building permit is more difficult than Nicholas cage's voyage in all of the National Treasure movies combined. I am not saying that general contractors are bad people. I am...
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Happy holidays from Philadelphia Zoning! We've had quite a year here, thanks to our clients, legal partners, and design partners. To thank everyone, we're offering this present: A handy reference guide for our most common permitting projects. Enjoy! General Zoning and Permitting Information The source: The Philadelphia Zoning Code The Philadelphia Code can be found here. Title 14 (what those of us not in the legal profession would simply...
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We here at Philadelphia Zoning like to poke some fun at our City's bureaucracy. Licenses and Inspections can be a mystery to homeowners and developers: documents go in; only sometimes do they come out. When they do come out, it's often because they are rejected for arcane reasons. It can be pretty frustrating and eat your time (and it's why Philadelphia Zoning exists: to save...
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One of the most sensible and also counter-intuitive parts of the zoning process in Philly is the community review. Any time you want to use your property for something that the zoning code doesn't allow, you must seek a variance from the City of Philadelphia (as we've discussed). When you seek a variance, a community organization in Philadelphia gets to review the proposal before the City...
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