The Land Use Approval Process in Pennsylvania: What Happens in What Order

The order

1. Confirm the zoning district and what it permits. By right, conditional use, special exception, or not at all.
2. Obtain zoning relief if needed. A variance from the zoning hearing board, or conditional use from the governing body. This comes before design work matures, not after.
3. Sketch or pre-application meeting. Optional in many municipalities and almost always worth doing.
4. Subdivision and land development review, usually starting with the planning commission and ending with the governing body, alongside county planning review.
5. Agency approvals, which run in parallel: sewage, stormwater, highway occupancy where access is on a state road, and conservation district review.
6. Development agreements, financial security and recording.
7. Building permits.

The expensive mistake

Designing the whole project, then discovering the use requires a variance you are unlikely to obtain. Zoning relief should be established early, because everything downstream depends on it and design costs incurred beforehand are at risk.

Parallel tracks save months

Sewage planning, stormwater, conservation district review and highway occupancy permits have their own timetables and are frequently the actual critical path. Starting them in sequence after municipal approval adds months that were avoidable.

Time limits cut both ways

Pennsylvania imposes deadlines on municipalities for deciding applications and communicating decisions, and failure can result in deemed approval. Those provisions are strictly construed but real.

They also depend on the application having been properly filed and complete, which is why the completeness of a submission matters more than it appears. Track every date.

Conditions and improvements

Approval typically comes with conditions and required improvements: roads, stormwater facilities, landscaping, sometimes offsite work. Financial security is usually required to guarantee them, and there is a process for release as work completes.

Read what is being required and whether it is proportionate. Requirements unrelated to the impact of your development are challengeable, and it is easier to raise that before agreeing than afterwards.

Where a lawyer earns the fee

Establishing the correct route before design money is spent, presenting to the board in a form the ordinance criteria can be checked against, and reading the conditions attached to an approval before they become binding.