Stage 1:  Decide if you’re going for gold.  Your first decision after acquiring a development site is to determine how easy or hard the approvals process will be.  If easy, design a building that mostly complies with the current zoning.  If that doesn’t give a big enough building to make the project viable (and it usually doesn’t), then you need to go the hard route.

Stage 2:  Design a proposed massing.  Once you know how much floor area is needed, the next step is to come up with a proposed “massing”.  That’s architectural language for the form your building will take.

Stage 3:  Attend meetings.  Lots of meetings. Your approvals process starts with meetings – meetings with planning staff, with the local councilor, and with your neighbours.  Here’s where your proposed building is presented – defined enough so that it looks appealing, but not so much that it looks like a fait accompli.  Be prepared for some nastiness and changes.

Stage 4:  File your zoning application.  The actual building approval process you go through is very city-specific.  In Toronto, it could be by minor variance for small changes; a rezoning where city staff or the councilor is on-side; or (at least until recently) the OMB, for substantial contentious changes.  This is the riskiest part of the approval process where it could all go wrong.

Stage 5:  File for Site Plan Approval.  Site Plan Approval (SPA) is the city’s process for approving all technical aspects of the building.  You need a planner to push through this

process.  Previously you would receive numerous bankers’ boxes of documents, which immediately went into storage.  Fortunately today, they come as digital PDF documents.