We’ve always worked really hard at M. Grisafe Architects to maintain great relationships with the cities in which we work, including Long Beach, Signal Hill, Orange, Irvine, and the surrounding cities. We are knowledgeable and mindful of building codes and regulations and always keep safety in mind when we design. This goes a long way with city officials who are also concerned about these things.
Even so, the process of having plans approved and obtaining permits from cities for commercial and residential architecture projects can be a tedious one. However, it can be less tedious when a city has processes in place that are easy to understand and navigate.
The City of Long Beach, with which we work quite a bit, given that we are located in Long Beach, asked us recently to help them improve their internal processes by presenting a case study. We were approached by the Development Services Department through one of our clients, Deep Blue Swim School.
The Director of Development Services asked us to present an honest assessment of the process of obtaining permits and dealing with the various departments within the city on the commercial improvement project we were doing with Deep Blue Swim School. The case study project, which included adding an indoor pool into an existing building shell, was an especially useful tool because it involved all departments including Planning, Building, Health and Water. You can read more about our involvement in the case study in the official Press Release.
Long Beach is a great place to live and work and the city is working hard to keep it that way by being willing to adapt when necessary. We look forward to presenting our case study to the city and seeing how our suggested changes and improvements will be received and possibly implemented.
We are grateful for the opportunity to do what we can to help the City of Long Beach function more efficiently. Helping them in this way feels similar to what we do every day at M. Grisafe Architects, which is give people a fresh, outside perspective to help improve how they live, or in this case, work.
