Tag: zoning permit

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Philadelphia Zoning Guide: Industrial Zoning in Philadelphia

Industrial zoning in Philadelphia

Industrial Zoning = Hipster Zoning

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 the age-old question, “Yo, can I turn my single-family house into a multi-family house?”  But you’re not here for that conventional stuff: you’re into the darker, grittier, back catalogue of Philadelphia zoning.  Artistic zoning.  Hipster zoning.  You want to know about old factories, and the best places to start a craft brewery, and where to get like just a super fly loft space for your innovative yet socially empowering start-up.  You’re the kind of person who walks around Kensington, sees graffitied factory towers, and thinks, “I bet we could use this as a distillery but also a community center.”  You want to learn about industrial zoning in Philadelphia.

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Philadelphia Zoning Guide: Multifamily Zoning

Philadelphia Multifamily Zoning - RM-1 - Zoning Guide

Welcome to Permit Philly’s Philadelphia Multifamily Zoning Guide!

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.

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Rezoning Property in Philadelphia

Rezoning Property in Philadelphia: RSA to Multi-Family

We interrupt Permit Philly’s zoning guide for an important message.

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:

Can I re-zone my single-family building as a multi-family building?

Nope!  Next question.

Okay; it’s a little more complicated than that.  Let’s take this step by step:

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Philadelphia Zoning Guide: RSA Zoning

Welcome to Permit Philly’s RSA Zoning Guide!

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.

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Philadelphia Zoning Guide: CMX Building Overview

Philadelphia Zoing Guide

Welcome to Permit Philly’s Philadelphia Zoning Guide!

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.

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Zoning or Use Variance

Philadelphia zoning variance

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.

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