DATE: Saturday, April 26, 1997              TAG: 9704260259

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MATTHEW DOLAN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   38 lines

JUST ONE STOP WILL DO IT FOR MOST CITY PERMITS NOW

It used to be that if you wanted a building permit in these parts, you'd better get to City Hall by 8:30 a.m. with a sack lunch and a good book in hand and hunker down.

It was going to be a long wait.

But now, officials of this growing city, where a front-end loader is never far from view, are trying to smooth the arduous path toward approval of new home construction.

The city's Department of Inspections recently initiated a one-stop permit process for contractors of single-family detached homes.

The city issued 7,777 building permits in 1996, 1,129 of which were for single-family homes, officials said.

Some of the noted features at their second-floor offices include:

The option to pay water and sewer connection fees at the same time that a building permit is issued;

Erosion control and driveway permits are issued along with building permits;

Customers can pay fees for building, water, sewer and driveway permits with one check, cash or Discover/Novis credit card;

Hampton Roads Sanitation District fees can be paid with a separate check in the Inspections Department.

Builders said the new process eases the frustration of traveling from department to department to get city approvals.

``Before, you would have to wait in one line and then go upstairs and wait in another,'' said Bob Widener, president of Widener Homes of Virginia Beach and head of the Tidewater Builders Association's Chesapeake Legislative Affairs Committee. ``I'm excited about eliminating a lot of that.''

Carl E. Hall, city director of inspections, said his department is looking to expand the new process to commercial structures, given the housing program's success over the last month.

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