Case Study: Restaurant Permits Project

Little Caesars is expanding its presence in the Los Angeles market and needed restaurant permits for a new store to open in 2008 instead of 2009. The City estimated the review process would take over 60 business days, which didn’t align with Little Caesar’s timeline. So, they came to us for help.

Permit Place utilized our extensive experience in restaurant tenant improvements and our relationships cultivated with the jurisdiction to secure expedited review times and got all permits issued within 20 business days.

Challenge

State mandated response times for Health review are 20 business days.  The City of Buena Park’s building permit review time is over 20 business days.  There is no expedited review.  These time frames  drive the overall approval process and, depending on each departments comments, corrections and response times, can extend the permitting process to 60-90 business days and beyond.  The construction start date was tight so Permit Place was determined to deliver the permit faster

Solution

Permit Place leveraged its relationship with the City of Buena Park and the Orange County Health Department to expedite an otherwise unavailable review time for restaurant permits. We then tightly coordinated with the building and health departments to negotiate comments and corrections, securing project approval in one round with no corrections. This allowed Permit Place to get the entire restaurant’s permits approved within 20 business days.

Results

Permit Place successfully leveraged its relationships and negotiating skills with the jurisdiction and discipline reviews in order to secure a project Ready-to-Issue status within twenty business days of submittal.  This allowed the client to include this site expansion within their 2008 year-to-date expansion goals rather than the 2009 fiscal year initially anticipated.

Final Result: Permit Place secures Ready-to-Issue status within twenty business days increasing cash flow on the unit by 2-3 months.