City Of Tulsa Announces Plans To Speed Up Building Permit Process

Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum announced a major change in the way developers get their projects off the ground throughout the city.

What used to take up to 5 weeks could now take just 5 days continuing to spur growth in the city of Tulsa. Mayor Bynum says Tulsa was starting to get a reputation as a place not very development friendly due to long timelines and prices. So, they needed to change that.

There are projects going up on almost every corner of Downtown Tulsa and Jason Dennis with Ross Group has worked on many of them.

"It takes a lot of vision out front and a lot of work to make these things come to fruition," said Dennis.

Mayor Bynum says in Downtown Tulsa alone $300-million worth of projects are in the works. But until recently, he says, the process to get those off the ground was anything but streamlined and some developers were looking to our neighbors.

"He said the difference between being on one side of the city or the other was going to drive up time on his project by 60 percent and price by 40 percent. He almost thought about giving up the property," said Mayor Bynum.

On Wednesday, the Mayor announced a self-certifying process that allows the project owner to bypass the city process and go directly to an architecture firm or engineer.

"Where they can review plans that are submitted and certify those as ready to go. We still do our inspection at the end and if we find they certify plans they shouldn't have they can get penalized and thrown out of the program," said Bynum.

Cutting wait time from 5 weeks to more like 5 days.

"Amazon works with cities all over the world and they told me that our team they worked with was the best they've worked with in any city," said Bynum.

"It is a model that has been proven and we are optimistic that will head in the right direction and we will continue to see even more happen down here," said Dennis.

A project owner can opt to file a new application through the self-certification process and we have that information HERE