Not unlike the City’s permitting activity, the launch of the Development Services Department’s much-anticipated commercial permit dashboard is experiencing delays.
Local officials have asked Dallas’ Development Services Department (DSD) for greater transparency when it comes to commercial permitting times, but despite assuring the City’s Economic Development Committee (EDC) that a commercial dashboard was around the corner, the department could not meet its September deadline.
DSD is “holding off” on the dashboard launch while the department and the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence (DBI) clear out some of the stagnant permit data, claimed DSD Assistant Director Vernon Young at an EDC meeting.
“We’re doing some data cleansing there because of the numbers,” Young said.
He claimed that some of the stale permits were “all-inclusive” and that the department had to sort out how far back in time it wanted to go with the data.
“We want to be as transparent as possible and show you guys things from 2018 and 2019,” Young told the committee. “But again, we’ve had a history of not denying permits and waiting on the developer to come through, and so we want to make sure that the numbers are relevant.”
While DSD has taken several steps over the last two years to address long commercial permitting times, such as establishing an expedited plan review process and launching a commercial permitting hotline, The Dallas Express has continued to hear about long delays under City Manager T.C. Broadnax.
In September, Barrett Linburg, co-founder of Savoy Equity Partners, told The Dallas Express that his firm’s last four multifamily projects averaged 7.5 months before approval.
While Linburg said builders were losing out due to DSD’s slow permit approvals, he acknowledged that “permitting is complex” and DSD faces challenges like “workforce issues” that slow down the process.
“A holistic approach is necessary for long-term efficiency,” Linburg told The Dallas Express.
Still, not all developers are as acquiescent about DSD’s long turnaround times and the impact construction delays have on Dallas’ growth.
“Dallas is killing new development by lack of speed and incentives for developers,” said Conrad Madsen, co-founder and partner at Dallas-based real estate firm Paladin Partners, in a post on the social media platform X. “They continue to lose to the burbs due to these factors.”
According to DSD’s latest technology and metrics review, the department issued five commercial permits for ground-up development in August, down from seven permits the month prior, but in line for this time of the year, Young told EDC.