Trying to remodel a building for your small business? - Take a number and stand in line

California State Legislature passes new law telling city building departments to shape up

Although I am not in the business of remodeling buildings to meet certain specifications, I occasionally hear complaints from people who are.

And they have real-life horror stories about the number of exceedingly high hurdles and mounds of red tape they must navigate with representatives of local municipalities who stand as roadblocks to having their hopes and dreams come true.

Let’s say you are a small business owner and you have decided to rent a modest retail space in a popular downtown location and convert it from a dress shop into a small cafe.

There are, of course, rules about such things, as there should be, not to mention a variety of reasonable procedural steps that must be followed.

The health and safety of everyone involved, from potential patrons to employees to those involved in ownership should be paramount. Some of these health and safety rules come from the state. A few may come from the federal government. But they all seem to be evaluated and administered at the local level with a fair amount of discretion involved.

I won’t name names and I won’t say which cities are involved, but far too often folks have complained to me that when they first submit their plans, the attitude of the city employee on the other side of the counter seems to be not “how can we help you make this happen?” but “how can we prevent this from ever happening?”

To be sure, many plans are going to be deficient. Others may simply be a truly bad idea.

But the vast majority of them are sincere efforts to open a business that will perhaps employ a few people, give citizens a place to eat or to shop that they might enjoy, and pay some taxes to the city along the way. Indeed, some of them are truly great ideas.

But even those that do eventually get approved take far too long from the time the plans are submitted to the day the first paying customer walks through the door. We’re talking years, not months.

Meanwhile, the applicant is paying rent, likely servicing a loan and might even have an employee or two on the payroll. And yet, there is no income stream at all during this long period of waiting.

Frequently a “denial” eventually comes back pointing out certain deficiencies in the plans, but when those deficiencies are corrected and new plans submitted, new deficiencies are cited and the process starts over once again.

Let’s just say as a general rule of thumb, a tiny ant crawling alone up Interstate 5 from Davis to Seattle would arrive sooner than it would take many cities to approve a dress shop being remodeled into a small cafe.

I had a friend who was going through the approval process with a certain city, but suddenly the public official on the other end of his application for a remodel stopped returning his phone calls and stopped answering his emails. This had been going on for a period of four months.

My friend eventually set up a meeting with the town’s brass, including the mayor, and asked me if I’d come along to witness exactly what was going on.

When he talked about the complete silence he was experiencing, he was told that the employee in question had been on an “extended vacation,” but hadn’t handed his case off to someone else. This was offered not as an apology, but as a justification. As if that was just standard procedure.

The power imbalance here is more than disturbing. These folks hold your hopes and your dreams in their very hands, but treat them as problems rather than aspirations.

My friend eventually moved to Kansas.

Well, apparently several members of the California State Legislature have heard enough of these horror stories that they decided to take action.

Thus, we ended up with Assembly Bill 671, passed by the Assembly and the Senate and signed by the governor.

According to the Legislative Counsel’s digest, “This bill would establish a streamlined approval process for a local permit for a tenant improvement, as defined, relating to a restaurant. In this regard, the bill would require a local building department, upon the request and at the expense of the permit applicant, to allow a qualified professional certifier, defined as a licensed architect or engineer who meets certain requirements, to certify that the plans and specifications for the tenant improvement comply with all applicable building, health and safety codes, as specified.”

Furthermore, “The bill would require a qualified certifier, or the applicant, to prepare certain affidavits related to the tenant improvement under penalty of perjury.”

Now get this, “The bill would require the local building department to approve or deny the permit application within 20 business days of receiving a complete application and would deem the plan approved for permitting purposes if the local building department does not approve or deny the application within that time frame.”

Four months of extended vacation be damned.

Additionally, and this is so important to the many applicants who have been denied upon their first bite of the remodeling apple, “The bill would also authorize the applicant to resubmit corrected plans addressing the deficiencies identified in the initial denial, would limit the local building department’s review of each subsequent resubmission to the deficiencies identified in the initial denial, and would require the local building department to approve or deny each subsequent resubmission within 10 business days of receipt.”

Or at least 10 times faster than it takes now.

It might be nice for a representative of the local building department to at least once visit the site of the proposed remodel to see firsthand what it’s all about, but the Legislature didn’t manage to sneak that requirement into this otherwise sparkling, common sense bill.

Tellingly, the new law notes that “The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) Small, independent restaurants are essential to California’s identity as a world-renowned culinary destination and reflect the state’s diversity, agricultural abundance and tradition of culinary innovation.

(b) Family-owned restaurants serve as cultural anchors in their communities, preserving and sharing diverse food traditions across generations, while creating spaces for community gathering and celebration.

(c) The restaurant industry is one of California’s largest small business employers, providing critical first jobs, career advancement opportunities and pathways to business ownership for immigrant entrepreneurs and historically underserved communities.

(d) California’s restaurant sector is a vital component of the state’s tourism industry, with food tourism generating substantial economic activity in communities throughout the state.

(e) Local restaurants play a critical role in supporting California’s agricultural sector by sourcing ingredients from local farms and food producers, contributing to the state’s farm-to-table movement and sustainable food systems.

(f) Delays in municipal building plan review processes can create significant economic hardships for small business owners.

(g) Qualified licensed architects and engineers can supplement municipal plan review capacity while maintaining public safety standards.

(h) An expedited review process for food service establishments will promote economic development while ensuring compliance with all applicable health and safety requirements.”

Thank heavens for common sense and practical solutions coming out of that beautiful Capitol building across the river in Sacramento.

Reach me at bobdunning@thewaryone.com