Dallas Permitting Staff Just Can’t Catch a Break

April 14, 2025 | Charles Grand | | City Hall

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This week’s City Hall roundup is going to focus on the latest black eyes at the Dallas Department of Planning & Development, which handles permitting, zoning, urban design, and other development-related responsibilities.

Staff at the department had a rough go of it last week when some of its costly blunders made headlines, earning the city another couple of black eyes. Problems with permitting have plagued the city for years, so much so that Dallas became the impetus for state lawmakers to push for the permitting process (typically the purview of municipal authorities) to be opened up to third-party vendors.

Dallas Reacts to New Legislation Requiring Faster Building Permit Processing

Agonizingly long permit turnaround times at the now-defunct Development Services Department (DSD) didn’t do the city’s reputation any favors in the development community the last several years. Neither did the erroneous issuing of permits to builders in Elm Thicket/Northpark, who were erecting structures that did not comply with the neighborhood’s zoning requirements. More than two dozen stop work orders were issued last summer during that fiasco, and residents ended up suing the Dallas Board of Adjustment for granting variances to impacted builders.

Dallas Admits Elm Thicket Permits Were Issued Erroneously, Builders Ordered to Stop Work

Just a couple of months before the Elm Thicket/Northpark drama, then-Interim City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert shuttered DSD and the Urban Design Department, merging their operations into the Planning & Development Department under Director Emily Liu in a bid to streamline and improve city services on the development front.

While permitting has purportedly gotten a bit speedier, there’s still plenty of grief coming out of that shop:

Error Costs City Millions in Permitting Fees

As previously reported by CandysDirt.com, city staff apparently realized (months too late) that a measure approved by Dallas City Council last year that would have increased commercial remodel permitting fees charged to developers contained a formulaic error. Rather than upping the fee to put it on par with similar cities and put Planning & Development on a self-sustaining track, the bad formula led to a sharp drop in revenue: $8.6 million and counting.

Moving as quickly as municipal government can, staff appeared before the Economic Development Committee on April 7 to advance a correction to the formula. Council members on the committee seemed to let the blunder slide, offering little in the way of commentary.

Staff essentially bit the bullet on this one, taking measures to scale back spending to offset the millions of dollars in unrealized fees the department would’ve been entitled to.

“We’ve had a hiring freeze [outside of] hard-to-fill positions and inspector positions. We’ve deferred fleet replacement. We’ve limited staff overtime, and we’ve suspended out-of-town travel and training,” said Planning & Development Assistant Director Catherine Lee.

“To address the future years, we are recommending that we revert back to the pre-May 1, 2024, fee with a 33% inflation adjustment,” she added. “For every month that this item is delayed, our department is forgoing an average of $1.1 million per month.”

What strikes me as astounding is not so much the mistake itself but how long it took for staff at the department to discover the growing shortfall. Granted, it seems the error happened under former City Manager T.C. Broadnax and ousted DSD Director Andrew Espinoza’s watch. Maybe the multi-million dollar oopsie got lost in the shuffle during the merger that spawned Planning & Development.

You’ve also got to wonder how many developers became aware that they were skating on fees and chose not to notify officials that the formula got mucked up.

Dallas City Council will consider the correction at a meeting on April 23. If it is adopted, it will go into effect on July 1.

‘Lemon on Stemmons’ Lingers

In another black eye, some council members appear to have spoken with WFAA about the fate of an 11-story office tower at 7800 N. Stemmons Fwy that was supposed to become a “one-stop-shop” for development services after the city bought it in 2022 for more than $14 million. Several million dollars in renovations later and the building was supposed to be ready for DSD staff to move in.

As previously reported by CandysDirt.com, it turned out that the building did not have the proper permits when staff started setting up shop in late 2023. The office ended up having to be vacated, with workers reporting back to their old stations at the Oak Cliff Municipal Center in April 2024.

Only one floor of the tower was apparently ready for use and roughly three dozen fire code violations were documented when staff initially started moving in. The fiasco, which was dubbed “the lemon on Stemmons,” led to an investigation and plenty of grumbling about responsibility. It wasn’t too long after that that Espinoza left DSD.

Not long after the building’s evacuation, council members were informed that it would take more than $16 million dollars in additional taxpayer spending to get the office tower fit for occupancy. The city’s been sitting on the building ever since, though council members are making noise about offloading the property.