Dallas’ Development Services Department To Host Pop-Up Permitting Event

Much has been made about Dallas’ permitting process, and the city’s development services department is gearing up for its first pop-up permit event to allow homeowners to quickly get permits for minor home repairs and upgrades.

The pop-up permit event will be from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. July 23 at 320 E. Jefferson Boulevard.

“You can come in, and we’re going to try to do everything we can to help you with these little simple permits, things that should be quick hits,” Andrew Espinoza, the city’s director of development services, told our sister publication D Magazine. “And what it’s going to do is it’s going to free up some of the time that we typically spend during the week trying to address these types of issues, so we can now focus on some of those more complex, complicated projects that kind of sometimes take longer to perform.”

In a June memo to the Dallas city council, Espinoza said his team took an average of 61 days to issue new single-family permits, which is a three-day increase from April.

He added that staff is working overtime and on weekends to clear the backlog and improve approval times.

“This is going to be our first pop-up Saturday. We’ve never done it before that I’m aware of in the history of Dallas and our goal is to repeat it every third Saturday, try it out as a pilot, and if the customers or residents, and the contractors like it, we want to continue it,” he added.

For more background on Dallas’ development services department, read D Magazine’s story here.