The Children’s Place: 130 Locations Across 22 States — PermitPlace Case Study

The Challenge

The Children’s Place is one of the largest children’s apparel retailers in North America. As TCP expanded, remodeled, and maintained stores across 22+ states, each jurisdiction brought different permit requirements, review timelines, and code interpretations. TCP needed a single permit management partner who could handle everything from due diligence through permit issuance — across new store openings, full remodels, rack/storage installations, and demolition projects.

The core challenges:

• Multi-state consistency — 22 U.S. states plus 3 Canadian provinces, each with different building codes, submittal processes, and review timelines. A rack permit in Texas has different structural requirements than the same installation in New Jersey.
• High volume of due diligence — Every new location required a due diligence report before lease signing. TCP needed 289 DD reports over the life of the program — each one researching local zoning, code requirements, review timelines, and permit fees for a specific address.
• Multiple work types running simultaneously — New store build-outs, remodels, rack/storage permits, and demolition projects all had different permit requirements and timelines, often running in parallel across multiple states.
• Architect coordination — KCG Architects managed TCP’s store design nationally. Plan check comments from dozens of jurisdictions had to be routed to KCG, resolved, and resubmitted within each AHJ’s re-review window.
• Weekly program reporting — TCP’s corporate team required weekly status reports tracking every active permit across the entire program. PermitPlace produced 197 weekly reports from 2009 to 2019.

The Solution

PermitPlace partnered with KCG Architects to serve as TCP’s national permit management team from 2009 through 2022. Our team handled the full permit lifecycle — due diligence, plan submittal, plan check comment resolution, permit issuance tracking, and program reporting — for every TCP location across the country.

How PermitPlace Managed TCP’s National Program

• 289 due diligence reports — Before TCP committed to a new location, PermitPlace researched the local jurisdiction’s zoning requirements, building codes, permit fees, review timelines, and any special conditions (fire marshal approval, health department clearance, ADA compliance). Each DD report gave TCP’s real estate team the information needed to make a go/no-go decision.
• 197 weekly status reports — From April 2009 through May 2019, PermitPlace delivered weekly reports to TCP’s corporate team tracking every active permit, pending DD report, and approaching deadline across the entire program.
• KCG Architects coordination — When plan check comments were received, PermitPlace coordinated between the AHJ reviewer and KCG Architects to get revised plans returned within each jurisdiction’s re-review window. This three-way coordination (AHJ, architect, expediter) is the core of how national rollout permitting works.
• Multi-work-type tracking — New store build-outs (60), remodels (55), rack/storage permits (101), and demolition projects (43) were tracked independently, since each work type had different permit requirements and review processes.
• 8,208 project files managed — Over 19 years, TCP’s permit program generated 5,817 PDFs, 522 spreadsheets, 477 transmittals, 449 permit documents, and 168 Word documents — all organized by location and work type.

Results by State

Work Type Breakdown

The KCG Architects Partnership

KCG Architects, led by Kevin C. Gore, has been a PermitPlace partner since May 2009 — 17 years. This is one of PermitPlace’s longest-running architect partnerships.

Together, KCG and PermitPlace managed 50 TCP store locations from 2012 to 2014 alone — 17 stores in 2012, 28 in 2013, and 2 in 2014. KCG handled TCP’s store design and plan preparation nationally, while PermitPlace managed the permit process from submittal through issuance in every jurisdiction.

Frequently Asked Questions