So I’m working on a project to put in an experimental nursery. The total cost of the project is expected to be around $900,000 (much of which comes from USDA - stimulus funds at work!) yet the city’s building permit fee is expected to be around $300,000!
Holy cow - that’s a huge permit fee.
Is that unusual for projects of this size?
Do any dopers have experience with building permits?
Thanks!
Well, I just pulled one for my garage. 300 bucks for a 24x22 garage. Meethinks 300k is out of line. Can you bring it up with a councilman?
Sounds like someone dropped a few decimal places. Building permit fees are usually based on some percentage of the total cost or square footage, examples would be $10/$1000 of work, or 0.10/sq foot. Charging 33% of the expected build as a permit would be prohibitive.
First thing you should do is get the fee schedule from the town and see if there’s some mistake. Maybe they based in on square footage and your planned nursery is huge?
I agree that it’s out of line, but I was wondering if there were reasons for it that I don’t understand.
I could bring it up with a city councilman, but that might have less weight since I don’t live in the city it’s going to be in.
The total site area will encompass about 1.08 acres – I guess that’s about 47,000 sq. ft.
Actual building will be much smaller than that 360 sq. ft. of impermeable surface and a 480 sq. ft. office/storage/lab area.
Here’s hoping that’s some mistake. Jeez, we could really use that money on something else.
Building permit fees are usually based on one of two factors (or sometimes both). Square footage or contract price. It seems highly unusual for a permit fee to be 33% of the contract price.
I pull permits across the country for work. It sounds to me like there’s been some kind of mistake. I’d just call the municipality that issued it and ask.
I’m gonna go with: whomever calculated the fee took in the whole facility instead of just what is supposed to be under roof. Call the building official.
I would concur. That is pretty high for a permit. Likely when you (or whoever) applied for the permit they put the square foot numbers in the wrong spot and someone used the wrong numbers to calculate the fee. There isn’t going to be a large review time for a greenhouse by the building department as it isn’t a complicated building that has a lot of public safety issues involved.
I would suspect it is more likely $30-50,000 for a permit for a project like this. Of course it all depends on where it is located.
Maybe that city is trying to run up some revenue by imposing huge permit fees! But that will only backfire since developers would put political pressure since fees of that magnitude would crush their performa, so the only logical explanation is that it is calculated incorrectly.
Good Luck!
As part of my job, I help set building permit fees. $300,000 for a $900,000 building is really outrageous, even if there’s a worst-case scenario: a community with several impact fees on top of the building permit fees (which shouldn’t be applicable for an agricultural-related use), and a double-fee penalty for starting work before the permit was approved.
Gotta’ have a bit more information to really make a judgement call, though. What’s the square footage under roof; it it just the smnall lab, or are there nurseries? What’s the zoning?
There must be something else to it. In Downtown Honolulu, $900,000 building would be assessed only $7,000. However, everything else such as sewage, fencing, digging a basement, etc. is ***NOT ***included.
Of course this is for a private single family residence.
It turns out that was just an estimate from one of the engineering guys - not the actual permit cost. I knew it sounded way too far off, and it seems he’s padding his estimate significantly.
He has some reason to do so - it’s a nursery for experimental plants that will be deliberately infected with Sudden Oak Death pathogens, and he’s worried it will cost extra for that and because of the special way we’ll have to handle the runoff water in a catchement basin that will drain to the sanitary sewers.
Still, we’re already in the quarantine zone for Sudden Oak Death, so that shouldn’t have too big an impact.
Worse might be the neighbors - the nursery is planned for a residential zone.
Still, I have to wonder why he padded his estimate so extravagantly.
elmwood - the square footage under roof is only the small lab - 480 sq. ft.