Preparing City Corrections

 Good morning, and happy first full weekend of the new year! I mentioned last week that a lot of our contacts went away for the holidays, it seems like we're now getting back on track. I'm feeling ill so I'm quarantined, getting tested today, and drinking decaf tea at home with the windows open for some nice Jacksonville traffic ambience. 

A Recap of City Submission Steps

This blog's purpose is to share the process and inspire others, by breaking things down as we go. Let's do a quick recap of the submission steps. 

Because our building used to be a sewing studio, I began by submitting a certificate of use form, for a change of use. If the previous use was also a café, it would have been just a certificate of use; Both are confusingly abbreviated most of the time as COU.

I submitted the COU in November ahead of my contractors to get things moving, at the time I was also allowed to include my permits (drawings of the general build out, plumbing, electric, hvac) from my architect. These were both rejected and returned to me in late December with notes.

Each time you submit you get a lower guaranteed turnaround time on city comments, so my next submission should be back to me within a couple weeks with a response. 

There were a few changes I had to have our architect make this time for the fire marshal, but mostly I just needed a scope of work outline and a few other things from the general contractor. You're supposed to take the correction request list from the city and write out a sort of Q&A to ensure each issue is addressed, which I feel helped me better understand the changes.  

Now it's time to gather paperwork to submit for city corrections.

So, along with the corrected permits and new COU application, I'll also need to write out the above Q&A document. The general contractor had me sign and notarize a "building permit application," use our contract as a scope of work, and gave us an asbestos notification statement; all for the city. The land owner had me sign and notarize a "notice of commencement" for city-submission, which will also be used for them to draft a letter of authorization to keep on site during construction.

I have most of that done now, and I think that about does it. I'm hoping to get it submitted early next week! As always, I'll let you know by the following Saturday.

That's all for now, thanks for reading and have a good weekend :^) - Elias!