Commercial Permits in Barrie

The City of Barrie Building Services reviews it as a building permit application, with or without construction. Barrie also has a site alteration by-law, so a job that regrades the lot for parking or a patio can need a second permit with a grading plan.

Only when the work reaches regulated land near a watercourse, valley, wetland or floodplain in Barrie, which Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority (LSRCA) maps. Ontario Regulation 41/24 counts site grading, moving fill and building or enlarging a structure as development activity, so the trigger for a commercial job is outside work: a patio, an addition or new parking. Where it applies, the LSRCA permit comes before the building permit.

For residential work, yes. Residents can apply for residential building permits online through APLI, the City’s online application tool, which gives real-time status updates and automatic email notifications about their application. That tool is described for residential permits, so for a commercial unit we confirm the intake route with the City of Barrie Building Services before filing.

Yes. We take on commercial permits across Barrie, including Allandale and Painswick, within an hour of our Richmond Hill office. The first consultation is free, by phone or on site.

Three things to start: unit address and the landlord’s base-building drawings, if any; what the space was used for before, and what you plan; and your lease start date and any landlord deadlines. Send those and we tell you what the City of Barrie Building Services will ask for before we quote.

We find out before anything is drawn by reading the permitted uses for the unit’s zone. For most of Barrie that list is in By-law 2009-141, but a unit in the Allandale Major Transit Station Area is governed by the Community Planning Permit System, and one on transferred land may still fall under an Innisfil, Springwater or Oro-Medonte by-law. If the use is missing, a planning approval comes first, and the City of Barrie Building Services cannot issue the permit until it does.

The building permit for the kitchen, the seating and the exits comes from the City of Barrie Building Services, once the unit’s zone under By-law 2009-141 lists a restaurant as a permitted use. Health approval, a fire inspection, any sign permit and a liquor licence are separate applications to other offices. We draw the floor plan, occupant load and exits once, so the same numbers reach every review.

In two cases. By-law 2014-115 applies where trees are part of a woodlot of half an acre or larger, which a bigger commercial property can contain, and a tree permit can also come into play when the work is part of a development application. If either fits your site, we count the trees the expansion would touch before the site plan goes to the City of Barrie Building Services.

Not under that rule. Barrie’s allowance for a house plus three additional units applies in residential zones, so homes above a shop depend on what the commercial zone permits under By-law 2009-141, or the Community Planning Permit System in the Allandale station area. Where the zone allows them, the conversion is drawn as a change of use for the City of Barrie Building Services, with exits and services for each new home.

The parts the Professional Engineers Act reserves for an engineer, since Ontario’s Building Code Act bars a permit for that work without one. Inside a Barrie unit those are usually structural, such as a cut through a bearing wall or a mezzanine. Outside, a patio slab or an addition on land the LSRCA regulates, or the NVCA in the west of the city, also gets footings designed to that authority’s conditions. Our P.Eng seals those sheets in-house before the set goes to the City of Barrie Building Services.