Archive for December 3rd, 2008

Ask any small business owner that has gone through the City of Tucson Certificate of Occupancy process and get ready for a long detailed nightmare story. Field inspections contradicting plans that have already been approved. One City inspector signs off on your building only to have another inspector stop your project over the very same approval. I know of a one year old building that had to re-do their restroom because it was out of code - after ONE YEAR. The parking requirements are archaic, just look at big box parking lots and you’ll see dozens of empty ‘heat sink’ spaces sitting empty.

The Tucson Citizen featured a local small business owners experience HERE and HERE( the online comments from the Star article are classic!). Long story short, Jim Heath bought a building with a large cooler attached and was told he had to remove it prior to getting a CofO. I had the opportunity to talk with Jim Heath and he went through every option in the play book and things didn’t look good.

A procedural change in the business licensing process a little over a year ago triggered a requirement that all business that change their address, owners, uses, locations automatically trigger a requirement for CofO before they can be legal. By some accounts over half of Tucson businesses operate without a CofO.

The question is, does the City like the unique character of older commercial buildings?  Many times to bring an older building, and I mean as recent as a building built 10 years ago into compliance, may be a huge expense if not impossible. The parking requirements, ADA requirements, landscape set backs, lighting codes, water retention basins and now rainwater collection towers trigger many properties into non-compliance.

Our community needs to make a decision;

Do we want the unique character of older inner city buildings?

Affordable rents are important for small businesses to launch their ventures. Infill commercial rents from $12 to $18 per square foot. A new development in Oro Valley can run up to $40 per square foot or more.

Issues of life and safty are non-negotiable but we must be flexible.

The Star correctly addressed the underlying land code issue HERE.  It doesn’t get more clear than this:

Mike Hammond of Picor Commercial Real Estate said he had a client who was tripped up by a rule saying that if the flush handle on a toilet is not on the side away from the wall, you have to replace the toilet. Cost: Six toilets times $500, plus labor. Reason: Unclear.

This is absurd and bad for business. It must be fixed. Thankfully, various elected officials, city workers and citizens like Hammond and Warne are working to get that done.

Hammond says Tucson’s land-use code has become so byzantine that “quality developers that we want in our city can spend $15,000 on a project and then discover they can’t do what they want to.”

Because of such hassles, many of them borne of confusion among city workers about what the code means, commercial developers like Warne and Hammond warn that Tucson is losing new businesses, and thus jobs, to competitors like Marana, Mesa and Chandler.

As for revitalizing the central city in the face of such bureaucratic hassles? “That’s just a myth,” Hammond said.