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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Wait, I have to get approval from what? Ah, prerequisite approvals! Who doesn't love that giddy sensation? You know the one: You walk up to the desk at Licenses and Inspections, submit your carefully prepared application, and are told in a dead monotone, "This needs approval from Streets before we'll look at it." There's no way around it: Prerequisite approvals are rough. In this story, you need...
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We here at Philadelphia Zoning like to think we have answers for you. We tell you we can saw through forests of red tape, and we mean it. But sometimes, we get a question that has about a hundred different answers. "How much does a permit cost?" is one of those questions. There are a few reasons why such a simple question has so many different answers. First,...
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Here at Philadelphia Zoning, we get a lot of requests from developers and homeowners for permits allowing construction. Every developer — and most homeowners — know that they need some kind of paperwork from the City of Philadelphia to begin construction, but not everybody is sure what kind. At some point we usually get the question, “What exactly do I need to give the City?” The...
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