After a few months in operation, a local business owner’s desire for outdoor signage at his shop on Concord Avenue set into motion a retroactive process for acquiring the necessary permits to run his business in Belmont.
“It was a little confusing … . We should have gotten all this permitting before, but there was obviously a miscommunication,” said Tanner Braun, owner of The Squabblin’ Goblin, a tabletop game store.
In January 2024, Braun opened the store in a rented space at 93 Concord Ave. A few months later, it became apparent to him that he was a few permits shy of what he needed to run a business in Belmont.
Braun said it began with a misunderstanding about the business registration. He was unaware he’d need to change his business registration from Cambridge, where the limited liability company was registered before he found a storefront location, to Belmont.
Then, when he went to apply for a sign permit, there was a delay in response because the online application portal isn’t designed for sign permits. The Planning and Building Department reached out to rectify this and asked Braun to come into the office for a hard copy of the application.
“When the people making my sign went to the office, there was a debacle,” Braun said.
As it turned out, Braun had received his Business Certificate from the town clerk’s office prior to acquiring a certificate of occupancy. To receive a certificate of occupancy, he needed to obtain inspections and sign-offs from multiple town departments.
“There was this whole month-long process of getting all that stuff signed,” he recalled. “We needed a building inspector to come in and check out the space, even though we didn’t make any changes.”
Braun felt the process was disjointed, but he credited the staff with making it smooth after the fact. Still, Braun’s experience pointed to inefficiencies in welcoming a new business to town.
“Once I got to the people that I knew I was supposed to be working with, that was pretty quick,” he said.
According to an email exchange between Planner and Director Chris Ryan and Inspector of Buildings Ara Yogurtian, Braun re-applied for the sign permit and, in September, received a permit for his sign.
In an email, Ryan said the situation with the Squabblin’ Gobblin indicated ongoing problems with the online portal system.
The Permitting Process
The push for more economic development has been central to most recent conversations in Belmont politics. From zoning to permitting, the question of whether Belmont is “business-friendly” is often debated.
Both Select Board candidates in the upcoming election have pledged to further strides toward improving the commercial tax base to reduce the burden placed on residential taxpayers. Those candidates, Planning Board Chair Taylor Yates and Economic Development Committee Chair Paul Joy, have both pointed to permitting as a pitfall in the town’s ability to attract prospective businesses.
“It’s a lengthy and typically expensive process and it can be onerous on certain businesses,” said Ryan.
An explainer on the town website cautions applicants that given the requirements of multiple departments, the entire process for opening a business in Belmont — from permitting and licenses to business certificate — can take as long as six months.
According to Ryan, the cost and time uncertainty of the permitting process are partly to blame for why businesses and property owners may be reluctant to choose Belmont. The first step for a business to open in town is to determine whether the use is permitted by right in the zoning bylaw. If it is, “That’s one thing out of the way,” Ryan said. ” In many cases, however, applicants must apply for a special permit through the Zoning Board of Appeals.
“Our community has a legacy of special permits,” Ryan said. “They tend to be the preferred mechanism so the town has more control.”
To receive a special permit, the applicant must have their request placed on one of the upcoming Zoning Board of Appeals agendas. Meetings take place monthly and are public.
“Then, once you get into the building permit phase — by right or special permit — then obviously building codes change and sometimes building interiors or exterior are not meeting the code,” Ryan said. “Sometimes, we require them to make changes in order to bring it up to the current code level. That’s state law, we can’t waive that.”
That, too, comes at a cost. According to the town website, building permits cost $15 per $1,000 of construction.
Given the size of the Building Department — which includes one building inspector, one part-time plumbing inspector, and one part-time electrical inspector — inspections can often take some time, he said.
“For better or worse, we have a capacity issue. Sometimes we get backed up because of that,” Ryan said. “I think we try to be as efficient and expeditions as possible, but sometimes the volume is high and sometimes we have to wait until we get to them.”
Yogurtian said in the case of a by-right project, as was the case with Braun’s game store, building codes allow the department to begin review of an application within 30 days, with “every effort to do a preliminary review within two weeks.”
The length of the process depends, in part, on how quickly the applicant responds to a list of questions sent to them from Yogurtian’s office.
“I think mostly, for contractors who typically are aware and used to dealing with the process here, they probably are used to it and can work well with it,” Ryan said. “I think the challenge comes in with homeowners or people who haven’t gone through the process.”
According to Ryan, there are avenues to alleviating the burden placed on prospective businesses and even property owners looking to make improvements to their home. One such solution is the creation of permitting guides.
“We don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “I’m sure we could take somebody’s template and adapt it.”
Hiring a second planner, which is accounted for in the fiscal year 2026 budget, would also help to speed up the process for applicants. In FY26, the town has included in its budget plans to increase the pay and responsibilities of an open planner position to alleviate some of the burden placed on Ryan, ideally allowing for a greater focus on the economic development needs of the town. Braun at The Squabblin Goblin’ suggested his process may have been smoother had there been a staff person whose responsibility was to walk new business owners through the necessary steps.
But in terms of the bigger picture, zoning reform would play a significant role in easing the process for encouraging people to do business with Belmont.
“Our zoning bylaw really is pretty archaic and pretty confusing,” he said. “Specifically, if we want to consider using form-based codes like we’re doing with Brighton [Street] and [Belmont] Center, I think the need for a lot of special permits will disappear. A lot of special permits are dimensional and building envelopes and lot/area-based. The hope is we can align our zoning with what’s on the ground already and by doing that, a lot of the variances and special permits will probably not be necessary any more.”
Doing so would remove certain more discretionary elements of the current zoning bylaw, such as “character of neighborhood.” As the makeup of the Zoning Board of Appeals changes, so does the subjective nature of what fits a neighborhood’s “character.”
According to Ryan, whether Belmont is “business-friendly” is a reflection of two challenges Belmont faces: one that is structural, and one of perception.
“I think in many cases, a lot of towns have zoning bylaws that are very prohibitive and rely most on special permits, and I do think we have a zoning bylaw that has those characteristics,” he said. “On the perception side, I think this has been talked about by many in the business community. They want to be listened to, they want to be heard.”
It also comes down to marketing.
“I think if you have a perception of being a business unfriendly community,” he said, “the only way you’re going to overturn that is not just by doing the things necessary… but also communicating that … you are open for business and that Belmont is a good place to invest.”