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Grand Rapids development center reports improved inspections capacity, highlights housing permit stages
Summary
City staff updated the Economic Development Project Team on a revised KPI report showing housing permit status by stage, ADU approvals, and inspection turnaround; electrical and mechanical inspection capacity is improving as new staff are brought on, while building and plumbing inspection timeliness are meeting targets.
City development center staff presented an updated Key Performance Indicator (KPI) report covering housing permits, accessory dwelling unit (ADU) approvals and inspection timeliness.
The report added a breakdown of housing units by approval stage — application, plan review, issued/under construction and completed with use-and-occupancy certificates — so the public and commissioners can see where units are in the pipeline. The report also highlights ADU approvals over the past two years.
On inspections, staff said building and plumbing inspections are meeting target turnaround times (generally within one to two business days), while electrical and mechanical inspections experienced delays of about a week to 10 days. Staff said new electrical inspection staff will be in place by the coming Monday and will be trained to help reduce the backlog.
Staff also described an attempt to benchmark the city’s timeliness against other U.S. municipalities; they reported the sample was small and apples-to-apples comparisons were difficult, but preliminary results suggest Grand Rapids is performing above average in the limited dataset used.
Commissioners asked for clarifications about how the report separates development inside downtown Development Authority boundaries from projects elsewhere; staff said they added a split to show construction value inside the DDA boundary versus outside it and will correct a table display anomaly that mislabelled a ward’s DDA data. The city confirmed the top housing chart shows units with issued permits and said the inspection and plan-review metrics are aligned to the definitions previously reported to the body.
No formal action was taken; the update was informational and staff said they will continue to refine KPI displays and correct labeling issues in the report.
