I think the greatest relief of last week was not getting my stucco finished and the scaffold pulled off or the sidewalks poured so we can start landscaping. It was having the appeal window expire without an appeal being filed to attempt to overturn the row house development permit.
While the permit hasn't yet been released, (I did pay the $4000 fee called the offsite levy), we have to meet a few more attainable technical conditions, the permit itself cannot be contested. The cost of moving the project along has been heavy in terms of funds, time and sanity. I wont be able to get a building permit for another month or so, and we still have the stormwater management and site servicing project drawing outstanding, but despite all the big hurdles left, I am pretty sure I can get this basement dug before the end of summer.
The project was arguably susceptible to being overturned on appeal because we had to negotiate a front setback relaxation. The appeals board could easily have required that relaxation be revoked, and we'd be back at the design phase. It would have been another major time consuming and costly process to re-submit a modified plan, and the project would have suffered mightily in terms of design quality.
The City is providing the public a better online tool to track these projects from beginning through to final permitting. Here is a screen shot of the rowhouse application showing the approval from developmentmap.calgary.ca.
No appeal was submitted. The four best words on screen. All of this information is located on a mobile friendly page at development map.calgary.ca