Cleveland is in Bad Need of New Housing. Developers Blame a Draconian Permit Process

The curious developer or home rehabber quickly finds out that in the city of Cleveland, and really any city in the developed world, everything he or she aims to build or change requires a permit.

Really, anything. Any new building set to rise, any eventual sign out front. Every single piece of new “refrigeration, electrical, elevators, escalators, lifts, dumbwaiters, amusement rides,” as listed in the Department of Building & Housing, “garages, sheds, decks, swimming pools, awnings, canopies, fences, signs, parking lots.”

And it’s just that process, which involves at least a dozen different departments—from Fire to Water Pollution—that Cleveland developers often dread when lining up to build across the city. Namely, as several told Scene, an almost anticipated lengthy process that lasts weeks to months that could signal the difference between money made and money lost.

“Time kills deals,” Dan Whalen, the 36-year-old developer who helped build Intro in Ohio City and recent founder of Places Development, told Scene. “You hear the phrase all the time. But it’s 100-percent true.”

In Whalen’s experience, building in Cleveland over the past few years, waiting for the various departments at City Hall to sign off on a building’s plan, takes anywhere from “12 to 16 weeks.”

“A lot longer than it should,” he said.

The issue in the mind’s of developers like Whalen, especially those emotionally connected to Cleveland’s growth, is that waiting for City Hall’s green light really does toy with profits to be made: lending rates in January won’t be the same in July.

And this issue is more dire when considering the facts. Cleveland is building the fifth fewest homes in the U.S.—not even four new housing units per 1,000 existing homes last year—a reality that has affected much of the Midwest and parts of the East Coast. (While the West and the South continue to build like crazy.)

As is anticipated by tourism boards, if Cleveland is to grow its population enough to warrant a spot in this century’s Climate Haven, the city is going to have to do all it possibly can to see housing built. And all of that, from luxury mid-rises in Ohio City to rent-to-own single-families in Fairfax, comes down to the wherewithal of developers to both buy into Cleveland’s market demands and the city’s viability for good, affordable homes.

But first, to not wince at its legal system.

“I mean, every project that I’ve done, it’s been between nine months and a year from permitting,” said Tom Hasson, 35, a developer based in Ohio City who specializes in low-rise apartments. “I might as well do the biggest project that will be financially affordable, because it’s the same amount of headache—whether it’s two units or 200 units.”

City Hall isn’t numb to such headaches. In June, Mayor Bibb signed an executive order shedding light on the draconian way builders get permits, announcing he had hired consultant Baker Tilly to overhaul the process with new staff and tech changes. Those, Bibb said, “which will ultimately make permitting easier to navigate for the public.”

Baker Tilly responded with some 40 recommendations, ranging from how Building & Housing advertises its applications to the digital system that tracks permits across department review. The goal being, Baker Tilly said, “improved response times.” “Higher-touch customer service.”

“I’ve heard of developers just kind of, like, giving up on Cleveland altogether,” a real estate broker, who talked to Scene on the condition of anonymity, said. “They just say, ‘Yeah, I’d rather just build in Colorado because it’s so much easier.”

Along with Cleveland’s new tax abatement policy, sold by City Hall as a legislative way to kickstart home builds, a revised—or as Bibb might say, modernized—way of how those interested in building in the city get legal permission to do so could reverse the region’s 60-year trend of folks moving out.

A lot of that could simply have to do with how, and where, new housing is actually built. In the past decade, 48,171 new residential permits have been handed out, Cleveland’s data portal showed, mostly on the city’s far-west side. And since 2015, there’s been about a 15- to 20-percent drop—from a high of 1,762 permits for new home builds in 2019, to 1,223 in the spring of 2024.

Scene reached out to Building & Housing for a comment on this story, but did not hear back in time.

Permits, and the online process of applying for them, could easily go the way of Cleveland’s revised 311 system, which was overhauled this summer and debuted online in early September. As did the way of Downtown’s parking.

The fix, both Hasson and Whalen suggested, should aim to simplify the process as much as possible. Imitating the clear-cut way of, say, Strongsville’s permit page, which has a bright green “Apply For Permit” button for ready-to-go builders. (Cleveland’s, on the other hand, lists City Hall’s address.)

“Finding what actual form you need for building permits—it’s tough. There’s like 60 links. You don’t know where to click. You don’t know which one does what,” Whalen said.

“And even me, this so-called sophisticated, experienced developer who’s been through the city process on numerous occasions. I had to call the building officials. ‘Which form am I using for this?'”

Strongsville’s permitting process was part of the reason Hasson built apartments behind a plaza off Pearl and Shurmer roads last year. Hasson had more of an itch to built in the city—he’d grown up partly in North Royalton—but this particular site along Strongsville’s retail stretch intrigued him. It was efficient. It was an easy build.

“Like, literally from the day I turned the drawings in to the day I had an approved set of plans that I could build,” Hasson said. “It was, like, 26 days.”