The City of Dallas has pushed back the release date for its new permit dashboard to next year.
Dallas will launch its forthcoming Commercial Permit Activity Dashboard (CPAD) in January 2024, according to a Development Services Department (DSD) presentation given to the City’s Economic Development Committee (EDC).
Despite having already soft-launched the CPAD internally in October, DSD Director Andrew Espinoza said the department — in conjunction with the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence (DBI) — had to postpone the official rollout, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“As you know, last year we rolled out a residential dashboard, which was very helpful and was able to help us gather some really meaningful data and make some really effective decisions,” Espinoza told EDC members during the presentation.
However, while work by Brita Andercheck, the City’s chief data officer, and her team at DBI led to the dashboard’s soft launch, DSD and DBI claimed that stagnant and stale permit submittals have impacted the data’s accuracy.
“Our team is going through those [stagnant permits], filtering through them, and trying to get them out of the weeds, issued, or canceled appropriately,” Espinoza said.
Once the dashboard is finalized, DSD will demo the CPAD with development stakeholders in a bid to gather feedback. While further delays are still possible, Espinoza said he expects the CPAD will be officially released in January 2024.
Meanwhile, in an effort to improve the accuracy of future data, Espinoza said DSD is “moving progressively” toward only “accepting applications that are properly platted and zoned.”
“Having the majority of permit applications submitted online will help [DSD] to gather more accurate data as opposed to mixing and matching hard paper plans with soft copies,” Espinoza explained.
“We find that when a customer submits a permit application without having the appropriate zoning, it tends to kind of stagnate, and it slows down the entire process. In addition to that, we want to eliminate some of the redundancies,” Espinoza added.
Commercial development is a key component for driving long-term growth in a municipality. However, while local officials say they are committed to accelerating development in Dallas, lengthy permit approvals under the leadership of City Manager T.C. Broadnax continue to pose a problem for some developers, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
