The City of Dallas is working on creating a new building permit activity dashboard that aims to increase transparency and the accuracy of commercial information provided to the community.
At the start of 2023, Dallas’s building permit department — the Development Services Department (DSD) — partnered with the Office of Data Analytics and Business Intelligence (DBI) to release a new residential permit activity dashboard that tracks up-to-date data on single-family construction permits throughout the City.
While DSD’s residential dashboard has improved transparency on the single-family side of permitting, City Council Member Gay Donnell Willis of District 13 believes commercial building permits need to be “drilled into a bit more” in order for all stakeholders to understand more about permitting on the commercial side.
“I’m just going to take this moment to register that I’m baffled that in 2023, the ninth largest city in America doesn’t have a better handle on this,” Willis said during an April 3 Economic Development Community (EDC) meeting.
DSD Director Andrew Espinoza admitted that commercial permit data was not represented in the Department’s PowerPoint presentation to EDC members, but he assured the Committee that moving forward, it would be.
“I know it’s more complex, but now that the City’s housing permits are moving in the right direction, we still need a greater understanding of the commercial side,” Willis said.
Dallas City Council member Omar Narvaez of District 6 echoed the need for more emphasis on commercial permit metrics. “What you [DSD and DBI] did with residential needs to be replicated on the commercial side,” Narvaez said.
“Figure out how to do the same thing or something similar. I know it’s different, but we have to figure out how to get caught up. The commercial part is huge for economic development, [and] it’s also a source of jobs,” Narvaez explained.
The difficulty communicating consistent data metrics on the commercial side of permitting has had its challenges, but Espinoza and Assistant DSD Director Vernon Young said that Development Services and DBI are actively working to simplify the process.
DSD has proactively reached out to DBI for help developing a dashboard capable of compiling the data from the Department’s systems, according to Espinoza.
“Operating in two systems does make it cumbersome, but we went through a kind of trial-and-error when we first started collecting our data,” Espinoza said. DSD was also recently able to achieve consistent data metrics with the assistance of Dallas’ Chief Data Officer and Director of DBI, Brita Andercheck.
Young reinforced that the process is ongoing.
“We want the commercial community to know that DSD is vested and excited about the steps we’re taking in the next few months to provide them with accurate information,” Young told EDC Committee members.
Willis was slightly more critical of the proceedings.
“I came away with a very different impression from our commercial real estate community, especially about continued frustration and concern that Dallas is focusing more on the output of work instead of the impact on the community,” Willis said.
“While we’re waiting on this shiny new Cadillac or whatever, I mean, I’m fine with this little economy car — PowerPoint. [Just] put in the data — the Excel spreadsheet — so we can begin to understand where these [lags and delays] are,” Willis said.
“We’ll be happy to include that in the next presentation,” Espinoza told those assembled.