Building and Zoning Permits Made Easy
Welcome back to Permit Philly’s Philadelphia zoning guide! In this series, we’ve covered commercial zoning in Philadelphia, single-family residential zoning, multi-family residential zoning, and that sweet sweet hipster zoning. Now we’re going to talk about the Philadelphia sign permit. Warning: this story features graphic descriptions of bureaucracy.
If you’d like to see the other parts of this series, click here.
Oh my god we’re back again. We’ve covered Commercial MiXed-use (CMX) and Residential Single-family Attached (RSA) zoning in our Philadelphia zoning guide. Now it’s time to tackle Philadelphia multifamily zoning.
Continue reading “Philadelphia Zoning Guide: Multifamily Zoning”
In this blog we’ve been slowly progressing through the Philadelphia Zoning Code’s classification of properties (if you’d like to see the series, click here). But today we’re not going to do that: today, we’re going to talk about rezoning property in Philadelphia. Specifically, we’re going to answer the question seemingly everyone has about multifamily buildings in Philadelphia:
Nope! Next question.
Okay; it’s a little more complicated than that. Let’s take this step by step:
If you’d like to see the other parts of this series, click here.
Hello again! After last week’s discussion of commercial zoning in Philly, it’s time for some lighter reading in our Philadelphia zoning guide: residential zoning! Specifically: RSA zoning districts!
I can feel your excitement.
But this stuff is important, because most of Philly is zoned residential. Most of the zoning or permitting cases I’ve worked on involve a homeowner asking, “Can I do with my house?”
You are more than welcome to contact Permit Philly to ask that or any other question. But in the meantime, here are some answers to your essential concerns about residential zoning – specifically, Philly’s RSA zoning classification.
I was recently at a neighborhood meeting where a member of the group casually observed that the Philadelphia Code allows for an 8.5-foot-wide garage, but should really allow only a 9.5-foot-wide garage. If you are this person, you might not need this blog post. But for most of us in Philly – and especially for developers and ambitious homeowners – It’s useful to go over the uses and general Philadelphia zoning rules about buildings to get a sense of what the City does and doesn’t want. So here’s our Philadelphia zoning guide series.
First, we’ll handle the commercial buildings that also allow residential use: Commercial MiXed-use, or CMX.
Continue reading “Philadelphia Zoning Guide: CMX Building Overview”
Whether you’ve just bought your first house or are an experienced contractor, a Philadelphia building permit can be a confusing document. Not the permit itself: the process of getting the permit. Depending on the project, there might be a lot of documents required to successfully acquire a Philly building permit; and if these documents aren’t prepared in the right way, City departments reject the permit application. Because of this, Permit Philly has prepared a little guide to help you understand when building permits are needed in our city, and how to apply for them.
In our last post, we covered the basic terms and ideas of the zoning process in Philly. Now, let’s talk about the most complicated parts of the process: The Philadelphia zoning variance and special exception process.
In Philly’s zoning rules, property owners or tenants might want to use their space differently than Philly’s zoning code allows. This can be done, but only after special applications are filed, neighborhood groups review the proposal, and the Zoning Board of Adjustment approves the proposal.
If you’re confused about the Philadelphia Zoning Code, don’t worry! You’re in good company. The law that governs zoning in Philadelphia is quite complex, but the actual process that comes out of it isn’t so bad. Here are the zoning basics of our city.