Site Plan Review

The review of site plans has never been one of my favorite activities. Every owner has a reason why their site plan is exempt from almost all city requirements. It is rare to find the well thought out site plan at the beginning of the process and rarer to have an owner want to comply with the need to think through their site plan because it cost money that could be applied to a productive process for their business.

Now they think that the economic situation allows them to disregard all city ordinances and standards. Site Plan review is now a full scale battle that involves politics more than ever. Owners are running to the press and politicians claiming that staff is unfair and holding up projects that provide badly needed jobs. Nobody seems to be able to keep a reasonable perspective about what should be done. I've seen site plans where the site has two driveways built across a ditch and no culverts and I'm suppose to approve it anyways because the ditch is the city's problem. Thinking through the site prior to construction prevents issues that the city will ultimately have to remedy after construction - which is always harder then during construction.

The public is generally pretty quick to make assumptions and not follow the whole issue through until they start to have flooding problems or the street becomes undriveable. City codes are in for a few tough years.