Zoning fees capped at $40K for large development projects in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh City Council voted Tuesday to cap zoning fees at $40,000 for large developments.

Council previously approved a new zoning fee schedule that includes a fee of 0.1% of a project’s cost for residential developments and a 0.3% fee for commercial developments.

The $40,000 cap council approved Tuesday is meant to keep costs reasonable for large-scale developments, officials said.

The new fee schedule is designed to help the city recoup the costs of operating its Zoning and Development Review Division and to equitably divide those costs among projects of varying size and scope, said Jake Pawlak, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

In past years, the city’s fee schedule — which consisted of a series of flat fees — hadn’t been enough to recoup the costs to the city. Officials said it cost more than $3 million last year to run the Zoning and Development Review Division, which brought in only $1.6 million in revenue.

Pawlak last week told council members that the city had been “essentially undercharging” for many years and the new fee schedule remedies that. The new fee schedule, with its $40,000 cap, would keep costs manageable for the largest development projects in the city, while still ensuring that the city recouped its costs, he said.

He said only about 4% of development projects would be impacted by the $40,000 cap. No such projects have gone through the permitting process in the city so far since the new fee schedule went into effect at the start of the year, Pawlak said.