After long post-COVID wait times, the City of Dallas has made strides in commercial permitting
In 2022, Colorado-based fried chicken chain Birdcall announced plans to move into Lakeridge Village on the former site of the Chase Bank building. In early 2025, after the chain unsuccessfully filed two sets of commercial build permits, the center listed suite #100 as available for lease, signalling the end of the ill-fated project.
“I think they pulled out because they had been able to expand in other areas more quickly, which is our loss, and is a good example of what we wouldn’t want to have happen again,” District 10 Council Member Kathy Stewart told the Advocate in May. “So yes, I think they were unfortunately caught in that period of time where it was just taking too long.”
Wait times for commercial construction permits became a conspicuous issue in Dallas following the pandemic. In 2021, the median wait time for a commercial construction permit in the City of Dallas exceeded 300 days. Permit tracking, software issues and staffing shortages drove the delays, The Dallas Morning News reported in 2022, although a City permitting department statement to the Advocate stated, “Dallas’ inspection staff did not significantly change during the years 2019 to 2022.”
Streamlined workflow and enhanced coordination were major objectives listed by Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert in a June 21, 2024 memo announcing the merger of the Department of Development Services and the Department of Planning and Urban Design.
“This new department will house all land use and permitting functions in one organization, combine zoning implementation and interpretation teams, restructure the permitting function to provide clearer ownership and accountable service delivery, and create a new team focused entirely on customer and team excellence,” she wrote in the memo.
The new department launched a publicly accessible online permitting dashboard with updated data on commercial permit turnaround times shortly after.
In a memo from Nov. 1, Tolbert touted a median issuance time of 114 days for commercial building permits, a far cry from the average wait of close to a year seen in 2021. The jump was aided by the department’s closing of “stale permits,” or applications that have been inactive for more than 180 days without follow-up by the applicant. Of over 10,000 stale permits identified in a review process beginning in September, only 200 remained by its conclusion, according to a statement from the department.
Another major initiative designed to improve the permitting process came in May with the launch of DallasNow, the department’s new online software, which houses permitting, planning, platting, inspections and engineering in a single integrated system. Online inspections have also been introduced to accelerate initial timelines.
While it appears progress has been made, the department’s dashboard shows an increased median turnaround time of 184 days for commercial building permits in 2025. (The dashboard has not been updated since April). In February, that number jumped to 218 days, although the dashboard attributes 75% of the delays to applicants.
In Lake Highlands, suite #100 of Lakeridge Village still sits empty.
“This is just such an impediment to our even wanting to do business in the City of Dallas or wanting to develop in the City of Dallas,” Stewart told the Advocate in May. “So I think every council member was acutely aware that this was a top priority and needed to be addressed. And from my perspective, our city manager has addressed it.”
