When a property owner identifies what seems like a perfect site for a new retail location or mixed-use development, they often move quickly toward financing and construction. What many don’t realize is that a few months of careful due diligence done upfront can mean the difference between a project that moves smoothly and one that encounters costly surprises halfway through permitting.
Over the past decade, LHB has guided more than 100 property owners through a structured evaluation process that identifies potential problems with site development. That experience has shown us that most roadblocks can be overcome if they’re identified early on. The challenge is knowing what to look for.
The Work of Site Selection
Due diligence involves understanding zoning constraints, identifying wetlands or environmental considerations, reviewing watershed data, and flagging regulatory issues that will require budgeting before a shovel ever hits the ground. For a recent client considering multiple sites simultaneously, we developed a tracking system that became the backbone of their site evaluation, allowing the client to evaluate property-related data at every stage of review.
LHB’s approach to site evaluations is deep and comprehensive. In addition to space requirements and zoning requirements (for setbacks, height restrictions, parking requirements, fees and escrows), we consider a site’s suitability for septic, utility availability, right-of-way and easements, traffic requirements, public roadway improvements, and driveway location/spacing.
Our deep familiarity with the regulatory process benefits clients enormously, and our ability to assess wetland and flood plain constraints have more than once saved developers from making costly mistakes.
When a property looks viable, we prepare schematic drawings that become the basis for pricing the actual site work. These drawings serve another purpose too: They give you realistic expectations about what permitting will look like and how long it will take. Most jurisdictions require a week or two for site plan reviews, but that assumes drawings are complete and compliant. Getting there takes coordination—stormwater design, utility coordination, erosion control planning, truck-turn modeling for loading areas.
One Firm, Multiple Disciplines
Here’s where many developers get stuck: site development often requires expertise across several domains. In addition to someone who understands grading and stormwater, you may need an architect who can evaluate building-facade requirements. Beyond sanitation design, you may need someone who knows local plumbing code as it relates to outdoor sprinkler system requirements. Electrical expertise may be necessary to coordinate availability of power and communication utilities. If you’re not working with a firm that has all these capabilities in-house, like LHB, you run the risk of overlooking something.
What’s more, all these jobs need to happen in parallel, not sequentially.
This is where workflow matters—and hiring an integrated and multidisciplinary design firm helps. LHB’s process is designed to navigate all these moving parts systematically. For one of our clients working on a senior townhome development near the metro, this meant not just handling code reviews and site analysis but also identifying design options that maximized the site’s potential. Thinking creatively, our team was able to suggest workarounds for a substantial elevation change that could have become a costly liability.
The Cascading Benefits of Smart Planning
Recently, when we worked with a Lakeville developer on a multi-site entitlement project, it became clear that planning around utilities and site access was essential to managing costs. We coordinated utility site design, parking lot configuration, and civil engineering alongside entitlement work. We also flagged an opportunity for grant funding related to EV charging infrastructure—a detail that emerged specifically because we were thinking about the full site ecosystem, not just the minimum requirements.
This is what expertise actually delivers: the ability to see around corners. To know which regulatory reviews take longest in which jurisdictions. To recognize when enhanced landscaping plans will be required. To understand how truck turning radiuses affect your site layout. If you don’t want surprises to upend your timeline, you have to coordinate the work of all the specialists, from civil to landscaping and more.
A Loyalty-Based Approach
LHB’s longest land-development partnership has spanned a decade, with multiple sites successfully evaluated and built on. Such longevity among our client relationships is not uncommon, and it reflects something we believe in: Developers benefit when the team understands their principles, risk tolerance, and what “done right” looks like to them.∎
Learn more about LHB’s land development and planning capabilities.
