3.
Collaborate with Communities and Municipalities
often begins with meeting with local stakeholders to discuss your chances of approval. Consider presenting a simple site plan rather than putting together a comprehensive package. This allows your team to gauge the interest of the community and make adjustments early on to ease their concerns.
most important thing is to maintain flexibility to meet the community’s needs.
Taking small steps to win the community
There are local factors that influence a project’s chance of success. These can include obtaining special permits in towns and villages that allow residents to vote on projects or navigating longer planning processes and formal community engagement efforts for large downtown developments and mixed-use projects before submitting final documents. The
Bohler recommends approaching the site planning process in small steps. Some developers might be eager to move faster, but taking a deliberate approach helps the project progress more smoothly and saves time in the long run.
Meeting with reviewers to expedite approvals
Breaking the process into small steps
In many jurisdictions, an influx of unseasoned reviewers can make for a painfully slow experience for developers. Be proactive, educating municipal or agency staff through the process to help expedite reviews and secure approvals. For larger projects or more complicated designs, meet with reviewers in person or virtually to talk through the plans before they issue their first round of comments. Meeting with officials allows developers and consultants to discuss development considerations quickly and offers an opportunity to explain design rationale. This approach tends to reduce extra rounds of comment. Any time you can eliminate one or two rounds of review comments, it shaves a couple of months off the project timeline.
Creating community support to streamline the process
Holding meetings with staff, agencies, and community members early in the planning process gives them a sense of ownership — helping to generate support, even for complicated projects. It’s an effective way to approach the early design stages and due diligence. Community members and municipal staff often give glowing feedback because they feel heard and appreciated from the beginning.
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While expanding timelines may be inevitable, engaging a land development consultant early in the site planning process can result in a more comprehensive strategy to keep the project moving forward — including more accurate cost and timeline estimates and better solutions to address potential schedule slowdowns. DP Michael Takacs is an associate and branch manager of the Pittsburgh office of Bohler. He can be reached at mtakacs@ bohlereng.com.
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DEVELOPING PITTSBURGH | Fall 2022
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