Commercial Development

Submittal Requirement

The first step to submitting a development of any kind is to call (850) 267-1955 to schedule a pre-application meeting with staff. No applications will be accepted prior to a pre-application meeting.

Commercial Development

Non-residential projects are broken down into Major, Minor and Less-Than-Minor developments.

A Major development is a project consisting of 5,000 square feet or more of non-residential floor area. Major developments are required to go through the Technical Review Committee (TRC), the Planning Commission (PC) and the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) for approval. Applicants are required to post signs and send out letters to adjacent property owners in advance of the PC and BCC meetings. Submittal requirements for Major developments can be found in Section 11.02.03 of the Walton County Land Development Code (LDC) and development standards can be found in Chapter 5 of the LDC.

Minor developments are projects comprised of less than 5,000 square feet of non-residential floor area. Minor developments are staff approved and are only required to go through the TRC for approval. Submittal requirements for Minor developments can be found in Section 11.02.03 of the LDC and development standards can be found in Chapter 5 of the LDC.

A Less-Than-Minor development is used to amend a project with a previously issued Development Order (DO). If the project does not have an existing DO, than a Less-Than-Minor development cannot be used. It then has to be a Minor development. Less-Than-Minor developments are staff approved and go through the TRC on a case by case basis.