The folks at LongHorn Steakhouse were mighty pleased with how Mesa handled the permits for their new restaurant in Mesa's Fiesta District.
But Sal DiCiccio, a Phoenix city councilman, thinks the restaurant chain and other Valley developers should be given an even faster green light for their projects.
His reason: The sooner buildings come out of the ground, the sooner construction workers can start collecting paychecks and the sooner those buildings can begin generating other economic benefits.
LongHorn, a branch of the Florida-based Darden Restaurants Inc., picked the southeastern corner of Fiesta Mall for its first Arizona restaurant because of the area's economic potential.
Despite the fact that several of the neighborhood's strip malls have dried up, Darden saw a potential market in the thousands of health-care, education and other workers who still pour into the district every day. Further, Mesa is planning to sink nearly $12 million into a major Fiesta District streetscape project in an effort to attract upscale investment.
It didn't hurt that Darden already has two popular brands -- Red Lobster and Olive Garden -- doing well just a stone's throw from where the steakhouse is going up.
Still, the chain had to nail down its construction permits. Things went smoothly, said John Keen, who is LongHorn's site development manager.
"Mesa had an open-door policy and was very willing to work with us," Keen said. "City Hall was willing to have dialogues very early on in our building process, gave ongoing feedback and was very open to being our partner."
"This is a win all around," Keen said. "It allows us to create jobs faster."
DiCiccio, however, is pushing a new system that in many cases boils the permitting process to a day or less.
He is spreading the news with the zeal of an apostle, approaching numerous other Valley communities with the idea because, he said, a job for one city is really a job for all.
The program is called self-certification.
After a period of training, the design professionals are entitled to walk into Phoenix City Hall with a set of self-certified plans and walk out all but immediately with their building permits.
The program, DiCiccio said, sprang from the deliberations of a 125-member committee representing such diverse groups as unions, builders, city staffers and the libertarian Goldwater Institute.
DiCiccio organized the panel along with Phoenix Councilman Tom Simplot, even though the two differ as to political philosophies.
The aim, DiCiccio said, was "to make the city of Phoenix literally the best in the country when it comes to job creation."
Government, he believes, is too cumbersome in approving construction permits. On the other hand, privatizing that function into the hands of just one company would only create another monopoly.
So far, he said, 115 professionals are entitled to use the speeded-up process, and other individuals or companies can go through them if they want quick permit approvals.
Not all projects are eligible, however. Buildings taller than 75 feet, steep-slope projects and potentially hazardous land uses still need full vetting by city staffers. Otherwise, every commercial and residential project in Phoenix can hit the fast track.
Further, DiCiccio said, the professionals undergo rigid scrutiny their first few times through the process.
"If they fail three times they can't do business in the city of Phoenix under this model for three years," DiCiccio said.
Self-certification, he said, allows people with skills in one area -- say, large industrial buildings -- to serve that sector more quickly than can a city building department that must have expertise in everything.
He has met with officials from numerous Valley cities to push the idea, but said he hasn't gotten around yet to having discussions with Mesa.
That doesn't mean Mesa is out of the loop, however.
Development and Sustainability Director Christine Zielonka said the city has known about the idea for several years but hasn't seen a need for it yet.
"We actually had proposed, through the budget process, allocating money to put a pilot program together," Zielonka said. "That particular project did not get funded. At this point in time, it's on a back burner."
Mesa meets the needs of the development community by speeding up permits in whatever other ways are feasible, Zielonka said. As examples, she cited quick approval within the past two years for two large projects -- the Crescent Crown beverage distributorship on West Broadway Road and the 1.3-million-square-foot First Solar Inc. factory in southeast Mesa.
Mesa began issuing permits for First Solar even as the Tempe-based company was still haggling with Mesa and the state over the last details of its development agreement.
"Folks for the most part, I think, have been pretty happy with the level of interaction with staff and our willingness to work with the development program on their schedule," Zielonka said.
Developers, in fact, often rely on city expertise to fine-tune plans with a view to the latest building and safety codes. The last thing Mesa wants, she said, is for a self-certified project to be shut down in the middle of construction because of serious safety concerns.
"It seems like it's working," Zielonka said.
Mayor Scott Smith, a former homebuilder, said self-certification has been a buzz topic in the construction industry for at least a decade. Although he can see advantages, he also sees potential drawbacks.
"The reality is that some engineers and some architects do not stay completely up to date with building and fire codes," Smith said.
Even so, he expects Mesa to take a closer look at self-certification and perhaps move toward that model in the near future. "We're going to be looking very carefully at what Phoenix does," Smith said. "There's no perfect elixir."
Mesa permit numbers
Mesa's monthly building permits have climbed steadily over the past year and a half, from a low of 95 in February 2011 to 283 this past May.
Permits include everything from demolitions and minor jobs with no valuation to multimillion-dollar factory projects.
The most lucrative area from month to month typically is home construction. Other areas with high valuations are commercial buildings and commercial additions and remodels.
In 2011, Mesa issued 1,728 permits of all types. Of those, 523 were for single-family homes.
Through August of this year, the city had issued 1,466 total permits, including 556 for single-family homes.
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