Pandemic halts 11 years of permit increases in St. Petersburg

The number of construction permits dropped 14 percent in St. Petersburg in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, while the construction value of those permits declined by 15.6 percent.

The decrease primarily was due to the suspension of in-person city services to minimize contact during the  Covid-19 pandemic, officials said. The city pivoted to electronic plan review services, and virtual permitting and inspections, which it continues to offer even after the construction services and permitting lobby re-opened on Oct. 5.

“We think that’s not bad considering we were closed to the public for [in-person] services other than for inspections for six or seven months,” said Don Tyre, building official. “A lot of other jurisdictions aren’t as fortunate. Some of their workloads dropped off 50 percent.”

During the 12 months ended Sept. 30, the city issued 30,084 permits, compared to 34,998 permits in the prior year. The construction value of those permits was $660.4 million, compared to nearly $783 million a year earlier. FY 2020 was the first time in 11 years that the Planning and Development Services Department experienced a decrease, according to St. Petersburg Shines, a monthly newsletter.

Despite the drop, FY 2020 was one of the highest years the city has seen in terms of construction permits, Tyre said. Residential permits were just as strong, if not stronger, as in previous years, while commercial renovations took a slight hit, he said.

The city’s planning and development team did an “incredible” job to keep up the pace, said Alan DeLisle, development administrator. “It’s not been easy but overall they have done a spectacular job of keeping us in a position to have close to a similar year from the last two years,” DeLisle said.

Planning and development services were handled electronically about 20 percent of the time prior to the pandemic, Tyre said. The switch to all-electronic services was a little bumpy, he said.

“We had some growing pains. When we flipped the switch to 100 percent electronic it was tough on everybody. We’re a regulatory agency but we’re connected to the development side and the contractors. If we don’t have them on our team and they don’t have us, we can’t get to the end to achieve anything,” he said. “We had a lot of complaints initially because when we made that switch, people were just used to coming into the office and within a day or two, walking out with a permit. So that did change. There were growing pains on both sides, both for the development community and us. But we got through it.”

Tyre said the city’s 21 inspectors used innovative approaches to do their job.

“New construction is one thing, but when you can’t go into somebody’s house because of quarantine or they don’t want you in there, so we do virtual with Facetime or photos, and all those things,” he said.

The city continues to work on improving the electronic processes, although it’s come a long way in the past several months, Tyre said.

“We have more staff in certain areas. We have an electronic help line, with two to three people manning those phones to serve people who have problems with the electronic submittal or the virtual inspection aspect of it. We had to develop the customer service side for the electronic portion, and that’s something we didn’t envision going in,” he said.

Since re-opening for in-person services, there’s been a pickup in permitting activity, said Liz Abernethy, director of planning and development services.

Zoning requests were put on hold initially as the City Council moved to virtual meetings, and there was a backlog but the city has since caught up, she said. Local governments in Florida, including the St. Petersburg City Council, resume in-person meetings this week, and the city is back to pre-Covid volumes on zoning requests.

The FY 20 permit decline does not indicate waning interest in business growth in St. Petersburg, DeLisle said.

“In terms of the pace of the economy and pace of the projects that we have worked on as a city development administration, that has not dropped off at all. If anything maybe it has picked up a little bit. We’ve been just as busy if not busier with public-private partnerships and developers interested in the city, business development projects we have continued to work on,” DeLisle said. “I’m not saying that people didn’t catch their breath when Covid hit, because they did. But for St. Petersburg, that’s all it was, just a little delay in them moving forward. We all took a couple of weeks, or a month or two to assess the situation but most everyone appears to be moving forward.”

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