By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – The City of Port Angeles launched a new program on Thursday where you can get, free of charge, permit-ready house plans. Through the program, pre-designed building and engineering plan sets are available to build Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), Small Lot Homes, and Townhomes, both single story and two-story, ranging in size from 480 to over 2500 square feet.
City Manager Nathan West says the idea is to eliminate as many barriers as possible for anyone in the community who may be thinking about building additional housing units on their property, but may not have the money for design and other costs.
“This is just a big step in the right direction to eliminate additional barriers and streamline the process such that, really, what the applicants would need to think about is simply the cost of materials and the cost of labor. And that’s about as streamlined as we could get relative to new housing in our community.”
This program comes just a week after the City announced they’d be waving all permit fees for these types of building projects, beginning January 1.
Funded by a grant from the Washington State Department of Commerce, Permit-Ready Plans have been designed to help the community save time and money during the design, planning and permitting processes.
“And through that grant, our Community and Economic Development Department has worked diligently with the Department of Commerce, as well as a design team, to basically ground truth these plans, make sure they function for our local community and, at the end of the day, they are of affordable sizes, as well as they could fit nicely in some of our smaller lot sizes that traditionally are found in the City of Port Angeles.”
You can get a look at the plans and learn more by clicking here.
