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About the biggest delay in Seattle permitting is the requirement to get a board of volunteer assholes to approve the visual appearance of the project, which is
by lazyasciiart 2y ago
About the biggest delay in Seattle permitting is the requirement to get a board of volunteer assholes to approve the visual appearance of the project, which is estimated to add an average of 8 months to the permitting process but is allowed to last for an indefinite period. The average total permitting time for these projects (over 35,000sq ft) is about 18 months.
Hopefully they will be thrown out soon. The really fun note is that these boards are almost entirely made up of architects who are getting the chance to single-handedly destroy a competitor’s work.
- mywittyname 2y agoThis sucks. In addition to adding so much time and costs to projects, visual approval boards are going to be culturally suffocating. Some of the most iconic structures in the world were widely considered to be eye sores when new, see: Eiffel Tower.
- bluGill 2y agoSeems like the first amendment should prohibit that, but so far courts have not agreed.
- ajkjk 2y agoAt minimum any sort of approval system needs to come with some sort of rubric to bypass it: "build it this way and it's approved automatically". It gives the approvers the same agency while prohibiting holding anything up, and it puts the onus on the approvers to say what they want to see instead of the builders finding a way to hit a nebulous target.