EntitlementsWho Knew?

 

Who knew entitlements and zoning could be so fascinating? As cities sprawl and skyscrapers gaze across the masses, each park with barking dogs and running children, every industrial complex with the makings of tomorrow’s packages, and every home where mothers hum lullabies all begin with entitlements and zoning.

An entitlement is the process of obtaining a municipality’s approval to develop or redevelop a piece of real estate. Zoning is the city’s designation of allowed land use for a specific parcel. Whether industrial, residential, or commercial, changes to the zoning code often take a lot of work and are only part of the entitlement process as a whole. Altogether, the entitlement process grows out of the city planners’ vision, continues with the developers and city working together toward approval, and ends as the project moves from dream to reality.

In a job field where zoning codes often include hundreds upon hundreds of pages, words like family, closeness and efficiency might seem remote. However, Melissa Eure, president of G.C. Garcia, a Nevada-based land planning and development services firm, suggests otherwise. For her, entitlements, zoning and land development are the family business and a way of life. They are also a fascinating challenge and a way to help others.

Growing up with a father involved in city planning, she found herself understanding processes that many others never even knew existed. “I recall being younger and walking through City Hall in Henderson when he was working there as a planning director for the City of Henderson. I did homework sometimes when he was attending City Council or Planning Commission meetings. I’ve been around it pretty much all my life.”

Growing up around the industry, she learned the value of walking through the process with clients while also enjoying the challenge when no two projects are ever the same. “You can get a lot of knowledge, but it keeps things interesting because there’s always something different and there’s always something new.”

Unity & Variety: Cities & Their Roles

The flashy, fast-paced world of Vegas contrasts the laid-back biggest little city up north. That’s not to say anything of smaller towns scattered across the state and the cities across the country. Every city takes on a persona of its own, and every entitlement process can look slightly different. What each of them have in common, however, is the need to guide and facilitate healthy growth. This occurs through the city departments tasked with creating zoning codes and enforcing them by facilitating the entitlement process.

Eddie Dichter, assistant director of community development and services in Henderson, describes the role of the department. “Our long-term goal is to make sure that any development that comes in to request entitlements is in compliance with our comprehensive plan, our zoning code, etc,” he said.

That is no small job, often involving anywhere from ten to fifteen internal and external departments which can include the fire department, utility services, public works departments, parks and recreation, school districts and even aviation departments.

Depending on the city, the actual processes, rules and regulations vary, including the amount of time it takes to acquire an entitlement.

In Henderson, Dichter said, “At staff level, projects can usually be completed within three to four weeks. If it has to go to planning commission, we’re looking at usually roughly about an eight-week process. City council is usually about a ten-week process if everything is going according to plan.”

This process can be a daunting one to those unfamiliar with how it works. What compounds the difficulty is the differences between regions and municipalities. When addressing the four jurisdictions within Clark County, Henderson, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Boulder City, Seth Floyd, the director of community engagement for Las Vegas said, “Each of us has our own different rules. I wouldn’t say that creates a huge problem, but certainly we each have different approaches to zoning and development.”

This variety of approaches means that there is one specific thing city leaders in development can always agree on: to be successful, developers need to be familiar with the local laws and regulations.

Angela Fuss, assistant director for development services in Reno, the department charged with overseeing building planning, zoning and engineering, said “If you’re new to the market and you don’t know the Reno market, you don’t know that we have impact fees, you don’t know that we charge for water rights. Many jurisdictions don’t have the same fees that we have here in northern Nevada.” This can come as a surprise to people from the Midwest where they are not required to buy water rights when developing land.

Fuss continued, “Use a design team that knows the politics and knows the community and knows the rules and regulations of that jurisdiction. It will definitely save you time.” In a world where entitlement processes vary and where time is money, taking time to work with professionals who are familiar with the area as well as engage with the local department in charge of the planning process makes all the difference.

Challenges of Growth

Regardless of how smooth that process is, cities in Nevada are dealing with a variety of challenges when it comes to entitlements and zoning. Floyd spoke of the challenges that come with overseeing the development of a thriving metropolis. “Vegas really has always continued to grow. We went from a really tiny little city in the 50s and 60s to kind of an explosive boom through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. We’re still growing.” In the next thirty years, the city is expecting some 300,000 people to move to Las Vegas.

“You look at the East Coast and a lot of those cities are dealing with the opposite problem. Folks are leaving, infrastructure is getting older, cities are shrinking because a lot of them are moving out west. We’re still dealing with pretty rapid growth,” Floyd explained.

Because of this growth, the city does the best it can to plan, but even the best laid plans sometimes fail to accurately foresee what the market will demand. As a result, cities sometimes adopt a plan for what each segment of the land will be utilized for, whether industrial, commercial or residential. However, if, in coming years, the need changes, the developers apply to develop the land in different ways triggering a series of processes to change land use.

“That’s always a challenge with the city with developers: changing what the planned land use is. It is a process,” said Floyd. “It requires planning commission, city council action, but that type of request does take a little bit longer because it’s more in depth and more detailed and you have to do some neighborhood outreach and make sure the project can fit into that area since you’re asking for a change from our planned land use.”

Keeping up Infrastructure

Fuss points out another challenge cities face when approaching development and granting entitlements. “As new development comes in, that impacts roads and traffic. We definitely want to encourage walkable neighborhoods and walkable communities, but it’s tough to be able to anticipate where this big growth is going to go and then put in the infrastructure ahead of time.”

“Most cities, they’re pretty much just keeping up with growth,” she added. “That’s a challenge because our infrastructure is always years behind where the development has flourished.” In other words, “How are we going to make it so people can flush their toilet?” Through all the growth, the city government juggles the needs of developers along with facilitating the long-term city plan.

Working Together

At the same time, developers are working to meet the cities codes, complete the entitlements process as quickly as possible, and navigate the challenging business world where time is money. Eure points out that code changes can be one challenge to developers seeking to hurdle the entitlement process.

“It doesn’t happen frequently, but when it does happen, it can really overhaul whole portions. So, things that you have been doing for several years, suddenly now you find that there’s a new rule. Things that were allowed before are no longer allowed. [There are] new ways of doing things.”

Even if the code has not changed, growth and development can often lead to conflict between different ways of life. Developers may easily find themselves the middle men.

“Especially with the rural-suburban conflict, there’s a lot of neighborhood engagement. You’ve got some people who support these projects, some people who oppose it,” said Floyd. “Developers, I’m sure, find it challenging to navigate that community landscape where you’ve got some folks who are really opposed to having higher density development come in.”

Alfred Melesio, director of land development services for North Las Vegas, is a self-professed, “nerd when it comes to cities”. He selected North Las Vegas as a place to dive into serving his community and explains the challenges developers and the city face together.

“It’s a balancing act because we have a need for growth in the community. Also, residents are looking for a good quality community neighborhood,” he said. How does the city facilitate growth while also working alongside the community to create peaceful and vibrant neighborhoods?

“What I have learned is that the more we listen, the more we get to understand what it is residents are looking for. Just as a common-sense way of doing business, listening to residents and hearing them out takes a lot of time, but it saves us a lot of time in the long run,” said Melesio. It’s a process of hearing the residents, communicating plans for improvement as well as ways to mitigate concerns and working as a team to build better communities.

Due Diligence & Reality

Completing the entitlement process can entail anything from checking a few boxes for a simple project that requires no zoning changes to months upon months of work, engagement with multiple departments, and adjustments to planning.

What key factors are fundamental in successfully, and quickly, completing an entitlement? In a system varying by municipalities and encumbered by necessary, but numerous regulations, one thing is certain: due diligence and preparation make all the difference.

Floyd said, “Call us first. If you have a question or you’re not sure, call us so we can walk you through [the process]. If you get it right the first time, it’s going to save you a lot of time down the road. One of the things that causes the biggest delay is when you get into something and you weren’t prepared or you didn’t have all the information. We end up going back and forth with revisions on a plan or comments on a building permit, and that ends up really wasting a lot of time.”

As all developers know, time is money. For that reason, oftentimes, delays in the entitlement process causes frustrations because they cause delays in the final projects, costing both time and money.

Melesio, perhaps, said it best, “I know government gets a bad rap a lot of times. This building is filled with people that care about their community, with people that live in their community, that are here for service. That’s all that I have seen in the walls of a lot of government buildings across the United States, but especially here in North Las Vegas.”

Each office, with its rules, regulations and processes, seeks to guide healthy city growth by facilitating entitlements, working alongside development partners, and helping cities grow. Melesio continued, “We want the development. We want those monuments to progress built in our community. Like everything, it comes and goes, and we want to be here when it comes.”