From Raw Land to Building Permit: Site Approvals in DFW Cities

On a new building, the building permit is the last approval, not the first. Before a city will review the building drawings, the land usually has to be zoned for your use, platted as a legal lot, and covered by an approved site plan and civil engineering plans. Each step has its own reviewers and its own calendar. This guide walks through the site approvals a medical, dental, or veterinary building goes through in most Dallas–Fort Worth cities, how they overlap, and what an owner can do to keep them moving. Our guide to building permits for a medical or dental office picks up where this one ends.

Zoning and specific use permits

Zoning comes first because everything else depends on it. If the district already allows your use, there may be nothing to file. If it does not, you need a rezoning or a specific use permit (SUP), which lets a use into a district only with the city's approval and, often, conditions. Both usually go to the planning and zoning commission and then the city council, with public notice and hearings. The City of Fort Worth's zoning page says it plainly: land must be zoned and platted before it can be developed, and a zoning change goes to the Zoning Commission and City Council.

Some cities also use planned development districts, which come with their own site plan approved at the zoning stage. If your lot is in one, the zoning site plan can lock in the building footprint, materials, and landscaping before you have finished designing.

Site plan and plat

The site plan is the drawing of everything outside the building: the footprint, parking, driveways, fire lanes, sidewalks, dumpster enclosure, landscape areas, and setbacks. Cities review it against the zoning and development rules. Some approve it at staff level, and some send it to the planning commission.

The plat is the legal map of the lot, recorded with the county. It dedicates easements and right-of-way (land for streets and public utilities) and sets the lot lines. Texas cities approve plats under Chapter 212 of the Local Government Code. Section 212.009 requires the city to approve, approve with conditions, or disapprove a filed plat within 30 days, and Section 212.0091 requires a written statement of the reasons for any conditions or disapproval. Cities generally treat a plat as filed only once the application is complete, so the completeness check is where time is often lost.

Civil engineering, landscape, and fire lanes

The civil engineer designs the grading, paving, storm drainage, detention, water and sewer connections, and erosion control. On a ground-up site these drawings usually go through the city's engineering review, separate from the building review. Public work, like a sewer extension in the street, may need its own plans and agreement. Fort Worth handles that through its Infrastructure Plan Review Center and a Community Facilities Agreement.

Landscape and tree ordinances can reshape a site plan. Most DFW cities require a landscape buffer along the street, trees in parking areas, screening of parking or dumpsters, and irrigation. Many also protect existing trees above a set size and require replacement or mitigation for trees you remove. Have an arborist or landscape architect survey the trees early, because a protected tree in the wrong place can move a driveway.

The fire department reviews access before it reviews anything inside. Fire lanes must reach close enough to every part of the building for a hose to get there, and they must be wide enough, strong enough, and turn tightly enough for the city's trucks. DFW cities adopt the International Fire Code with local amendments, so the rules differ from one city to the next. Fire lanes are usually striped and often dedicated on the plat as fire lane easements.

Utility tie-ins

Each utility has its own approval. The city reviews water and sewer taps and any fire line or backflow device. The electric provider designs service to the building and usually needs the site plan and the electrical load early. The gas company does the same. Utility lead times can be longer than plan review, so request service as soon as the site plan is stable. At a plastic surgery center we built from the ground up in Grapevine, the site included a detention pond enclosed by wrought iron fencing for drainage, along with a prepared pad and additional parking for future expansion. Decisions like those belong on the civil drawings from the start.

How the approvals overlap, and how to keep them moving

The steps are not strictly in a line. A typical order is zoning, then the plat and site plan together, then civil plans, then the building permit. Many cities let you submit the building drawings while the plat or civil plans are still in review, but will not issue the building permit until the plat is recorded and the civil plans are approved. Some will release a grading or early site permit so dirt work can start. Ask each city what it allows, because the answer changes the schedule.

• Ask for a pre-development meeting. Fort Worth offers an optional Pre-Development Conference where staff from about a dozen city groups, including fire, transportation, water, platting, zoning, and stormwater, review the project with you. Dallas and many suburbs offer similar meetings.
• Hire the civil engineer and the architect at the same time, and have them share one site plan.
• Bring the contractor in early, so pricing and constructability feed the site design instead of following it.
• Answer review comments in full and in one submittal. Partial answers restart the cycle.
• Keep one person on the owner's side who can make decisions quickly.

Structures and Interiors builds new buildings from the ground up, and we coordinate with the owner's architect and civil engineer through these approvals. At GI Alliance Willow Park, the site design used sandstone retaining walls, custom guardrails, and switchback ramps to make the most of a small lot, and the site work included an offsite sewer extension. We also finish out and renovate existing space, where most of these site approvals are already behind you.

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