The Los Angeles departments of Building & Safety and Planning recently re-opened to the public, but operations and services remain very limited and several other critical departments to development services remain closed to the public.
First, the good news. LADBS and City Planning re-opened their doors at the city’s downtown Metro Development Services Center on April 25 for a limited number of in-person appointments. For the Department of City Planning, a couple of appointments are available each day for case submittal and project clearances. For LADBS, a limited number of in-person appointments are available for building, mechanical and electrical plan-check submittal, plan-check verifications, Green review, Disabled Access review, Inspections, Code Enforcement and historic records.
LADBS also said the department was beefing up its ePlan group, suggesting that these plan-checkers and supervisors will be able to take care of “simple” projects more quickly (days instead of weeks or months).
The bad news is that Metro is the only DSC where these services will be available. Van Nuys, West Los Angeles and San Pedro DSCs will remain closed to the public. Also, none of the other departments that comprise development services – including the departments of Public Works, Sanitation, Transportation and Fire – have announced plans to re-open their public counters yet.
These announcements do not impact the mayor’s current tolling order, in which all permit and entitlement deadlines remain on hold while the city is under an emergency declaration because of the pandemic. No word from the mayor’s office yet on when the emergency declaration will be lifted.
