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The foundation of a home being built in Chardonnay on north Porter Avenue is pictured. Norman-based builders and a local attorney who often represents homebuilders say high fees are affecting development in the area.
The foundation of a home being built in Chardonnay on north Porter Avenue is pictured. Norman-based builders and a local attorney who often represents homebuilders say high fees are affecting development in the area.
Editor's note: The headline of this story has been updated to accurately reflect building patterns in Norman.
Costs to develop and build homes in Norman are considerably higher than other places in the Oklahoma City metro and cities with comparable population.
Permit and application fees confirmed in June for Norman, Edmond and Broken Arrow show Norman is almost $1,400 higher than Edmond and about $1,700 higher than Broken Arrow for a home around 2,400 square feet, according to building fees obtained from the cities.
And that’s only part of the bill for Norman — it doesn’t include mechanical, electrical or plumbing permits.
Joey Wishnuck, owner of Norman-based Windstone Construction, said he did 75% of his business in Norman when he started his company 10 years ago. Now it’s about 25%.
Windstone has increasingly pulled more permits in areas of Oklahoma City that touch Norman and other communities during that time because of the cost of building in Norman.
Wishnuck said while the cost for a permit in Norman is .14 cents per square foot according to the city website, his actual cost is around $2.37 per square foot.
In an industry fighting for margins, Wishnuck said that’s a high price. A particular permit in the Fountain View housing addition cost $7,111, he said.
Curtis McCarty, owner of C.A. McCarty Construction, said the cost of obtaining a building permit for a new home in Norman is more expensive than anywhere else in the state.
“There’s so many costs associated with [it],” Jocie Brown, a project coordinator for Windstone, said. “We could build a $400,000 house in Oklahoma City, but it wouldn’t be the same house here, and we don’t make a dime more.”
Sean Rieger, an attorney who often represents clients looking to build in Norman, said new building connection fees in the city are drastically higher than any other city in greater central Oklahoma.
Increasing fees have remained a factor in recent years, and that’s resulted in builders opting to do business outside of Norman, according to local builders and developers.
Utilities director Chris Mattingly said water service connection fees increased in both 2015 and 2016. In 2015, it increased from $575 to $800, and then to $1000 in August 2016, according to city records. It reached $1,250 in April 2022, and will hit $1,500 the following year.
It’s difficult to stay competitive with other communities because of the discrepancy between Norman and other cities, Rieger said.
Like any industry, Rieger said builders consider the cost of producing their product and the anticipated profit from selling it.
If Norman prices itself drastically above other cities in central Oklahoma, then it becomes a factor for a homebuilder to consider when choosing where to build new homes, Rieger said.
Ultimately, Wishnuck and McCarty said these costs affect the total price for the homebuyer.
McCarty said when a development is put in, the developer has to pay for all the water and sewer lines, water inlets, detention ponds, streets and curbs.
“All of those are paid for by the developer which is then paid for by the person that’s buying the new home site to build, but then it’s all donated to the city,” McCarty said.
Builders say a big deterrent for development is one that’s been at the center of city politics in 2022 — water.
Planning commissioner Erica Bird said Norman is unique in requiring a vote for increases in public utilities. In April, Norman voted down a water rate increase proposal that would have paid for infrastructure projects.
Norman is an outlier when it comes to how it pays for water infrastructure — only about 5% of cities in the U.S. have citizens vote on utility increases, Bird estimates.
She said that contributes to why utility bills for the user are low, but to make up the revenue, Norman charges developers more and more to build.
Norman’s wastewater connection fee is around $3,500. The city’s wastewater connection fee alone is more than $1,500 higher than Newcastle, the second-highest fee in central Oklahoma.
This gives the city the highest utility startup costs in the metro by more than $1,000, records show.
By comparison, Oklahoma City charges less than $250 in wastewater startup costs.
Norman connection fees, which include water and wastewater, add up to about $4,500 in total.
Bird suggested looking into finding more of a balance between costs for developers and for the end user living in the home. According to the March presentation, Norman has the lowest monthly residential utility bills.
The increasing development fees make Norman less attractive for developers, Bird asserted at the March Planning Commission meeting.
“We need to be very careful about making sure all things are balanced and we have some unique stormwater problems here that have to be addressed – it is challenging for us to address them with our utility structure, but I don’t know that all of that money has to come from new development,” Bird said.
Nathan Madenwald, Norman utilities engineer, said the reason for that high cost began with wastewater system challenges around 2000. City staff decided around that time they wouldn’t approve any development plans because of sewer capacity.
Norman utility director Chris Mattingly said at the time, the City of Norman was experiencing sewer manhole overflows during rain events.
A citizen coalition was formed on the future of wastewater. They decided on a sewer sales tax to enlarge interceptors, a sewer maintenance fund to replace smaller sewer lines within neighborhoods and a sewer excise tax to provide ample funding for future growth and associated expansion.
In 2011, the Norman Utilities Authority completed the rehab of Lift Station D, the city’s largest, which was designed to be the future headworks for a new North Plant. Mattingly said this method was more economical than building a second plant. The station pumps an average of 1.5 million gallons per day to the existing water reclamation facility, which Mattingly said has plenty of capacity.
Mattingly anticipates a new North Plant will be needed around 2036.
“That’s why the sewer fund is so big, is because we get a lot of money from residential development and commercial development from that [sewer] excise tax,” Madenwald said.
“If you have a 2,400-square-foot home, which is really common, you start getting up there close to $3,000,” Madenwald said.
The city uses that money to expand sewer system capacity. Madenwald said they’ve expanded capacity by 5 million gallons per day.
Stormwater and building site standardsStormwater prevention and erosion control also contribute significantly to the price of a Norman Home — and the city’s standards for mitigation are based off federal requirements more than two decades old.
City Public Works director Sean O’Leary said these requirements stem from the federally unfunded stormwater pollution control mandate officially began in Norman in 2005 as an element of the Clean Water Act of 1970.
Michelle Chao, Norman stormwater program specialist, said Norman was included in Phase 2 of the Clean Water Act as a city with under 100,000 people in 2001. She said all of their stormwater requirements stem from those rules.
The city has grown from just under 100,000 to nearly 130,000 in that time.
This rule requires permittees to develop a Stormwater Management Plan to reduce pollutants in stormwater runoff.
“A big part of that is the sediment and erosion control plans, which outline where those controls are going to be where stormwater is flowing,” Chao said.
Under this mandate, the city is required to reduce stormwater pollution into streams, channels and other waters, accomplished through a number of practices including silt fencing around construction sites, O’Leary said.
“One of the leading forms of stormwater pollution is erosion of soils from construction sites,” O’Leary said. “Therefore, every builder/developer is required to submit their engineered stormwater pollution protection plan to the city before construction begins, telling us how they are going to manage stormwater on the site. City staff inspect each construction site bi-weekly to confirm the developer or builder is complying with their plan.”
Stormwater program manager Jason Murphy said If a site is not up to standards, the city may issue a notice of violation, requiring the permit holder to improve on-site erosion control systems within a certain period of time.
Norman requires the purchase of an on-site container to pour out extra concrete, thinset, building mortar and paint — an expense close to $1,000 on its own, Wishnuck said. He also said Norman requires, inspects and enforces if job sites are not up to their standard.
“It’s not that we don’t want clean job sites, because it’s important to us that our homebuyers are proud of the home they’re getting, and we want the sites to look sharp,” Wishnuck said. “But the level and the way that Norman requires it versus other communities is what makes it so expensive to do it.”
Jeff Elkins covers business, living and community stories for The Transcript. Reach him at jelkins@normantranscript.com or at @JeffElkins12 on Twitter.
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