Timothy Keane, commissioner for City of Atlanta Planning & Community Development reports the Atlanta Region has grown to 6 million people but the city’s population is 470,000 making Atlanta a small city in a large region. But change is here with Atlanta issuing more than double the residential permits of Gwinnett, Cobb or Forsyth in 2016. People now want to be in the city and with the region projected to grow by 2.5 million over the next 25 years, the City of Atlanta is expected to possibly capture 25% – 30% of that growth – a drastic change from the past 60 year growth of 10%.
Having previously worked in city planning in Charleston, SC as well as locations in North Carolina, Tim has been in Atlanta for two years bringing much needed change to the planning department as it has experienced big increases in permit requests. There are now 5 teams to deal with different types of customers in order to speed up the permitting process: residential, online, express lane (home renovation, fences), light commercial and commercial/industrial. Since May of last year, 34% of permits issued have been processed through the express lane with an average time of 32 minutes.