Between 107 and 168 new projects a year
The City opened 1,291 TRC cases with a filing date from August 2017 to October 2026: 939 site plans and 352 subdivisions. Since 2018, between 107 and 168 cases were filed in each full year.
Filed Approved so far
Cases filed in recent years are still moving through review, so their approved count is still growing.
The numbers
| Filed | Cases | Site plans | Subdivisions | Approved so far |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 (from Aug 17) | 84 | 49 | 35 | 47 |
| 2018 | 168 | 121 | 47 | 92 |
| 2019 | 138 | 112 | 26 | 74 |
| 2020 | 107 | 76 | 31 | 50 |
| 2021 | 135 | 111 | 24 | 84 |
| 2022 | 130 | 99 | 31 | 72 |
| 2023 | 163 | 127 | 36 | 73 |
| 2024 | 132 | 93 | 39 | 59 |
| 2025 | 130 | 85 | 45 | 54 |
| 2026 (to Oct 8) | 92 | 62 | 30 | 4 |
| No filing date held | 12 | 4 | 8 | 0 |
- 609 Approved
- 370 Still in review
- 24 Withdrawn
- 6 Expired
- 282 Status not yet readable from the portal
Every department reads the plans, and most ask for something the first time
On a first submission, the City's portal shows each department's verdict. This is how often each one asked for revisions.
A first submission is where the City tells the design team what its own manuals require. It is normal to go back at least once.
Approval usually takes five rounds
Of the 608 approved cases with review rounds held, the median case was approved in round 5 (middle half: round 4 to round 6). 6 were approved in one round, 24 in two, 100 in three, and 478 (79%) needed four or more.
The last round is usually the one that is approved, so a five-round case was sent back four times.
Round approved in
About 15 months from filing to approval
For the 597 approved cases with both dates held, the median time from filing to approval was 448 days (middle half: 260 to 711 days). Site plans: a median of 459 days (421 cases). Subdivisions: 389 days (176 cases).
The first review comes back fast: a median of 27 days from filing (middle half: 17 to 52 days; 1,165 cases). Most of the time after that is rounds of revision, by the design team and by the City.
A first letter carries dozens of comments
Where we hold the first-round letters (453 cases), a case's first round brought a median of 58 comment items (middle half: 23 to 104). One department's letter carried a median of 32.
About half of first comments are about the paperwork, not the design
Two people each sorted the same 200 first-round comments, picked at random, working separately from the comment's words alone. By both readings, about half asked for paperwork, and the two agreed on paperwork-or-not for 174 of the 200.
Paperwork means a label, a note, the City's project ID on the cover, a standard detail, a signature, a form, a fee, or a permit from another agency. Design means stormwater calculations, fire access, sight distance, trees or grading. The rest were information or questions.
What this means for an applicant: much of a first letter can be avoided before submitting, if the team knows the City's checklists.
The same rules come up again and again
Across the 716 cases whose comment letters we hold, these requests appear again and again.
- Stormwater plan review fee: $500 plus $200 per disturbed acre 442 cases 62%
- Post the street address in letters at least 4 inches tall 411 cases 57%
- Put the City's TRC project ID on the title sheet 410 cases 57%
- City garbage trucks cannot back up: show they can turn around, or bins go to the street 152 cases 21%
- Fire department connection on the building, 20 to 100 feet from a hydrant 89 cases 12%
None of these is unreasonable. Each is easy to meet and easy to miss, if no one on the team has been through TRC before.
Following one project
A site plan for a new 20,000-square-foot multi-family building, filed in June 2019.
We chose it because it is close to the middle: approved in 5 rounds (the median is 5) and 450 days (the median is 448), with City letters held for its first four rounds.
In City review, 166 days With the design team, 284 days
Of the 450 days, the plans were under City review for 166; the other 284 were the design team's time between rounds, 221 of them before the second submission.
| Round | Submitted | Review done | Days in review | Sent back by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2019-06-03 | 2019-06-20 | 17 | 8 of 10 reviews |
| 2 | 2020-01-27 | 2020-04-28 | 92 | 7 of 10 reviews |
| 3 | 2020-06-15 | 2020-07-16 | 31 | 5 of 10 reviews |
| 4 | 2020-07-27 | 2020-08-13 | 17 | 2 of 10 reviews (Stormwater, Zoning) |
| 5 | 2020-08-17 | 2020-08-26 | 9 | none: approved |
The City's letters number their own reviews, which do not line up with the portal's rounds, so the letters are quoted below by the City's own label.
The first letters labelled “1st Review” by the City
55 comments, from Zoning, Traffic, Parks and ADA. Some are paperwork:
“Stop sign locations must be labeled on plans at egress onto the right-of-way.”
“Label the 4” double yellow centerline at the ingress/egress.”
Some are design:
“Project requires a traffic impact study.”
“Provide a sidewalk across the entire frontage of the project as discussed.”
“Study and remove five parking spaces out of the TPZ as discussed.”
Other boards come into it
The letters say the project needs final Design Review Board approval before final TRC approval, and must keep the trees a zoning appeals approval required:
“Project requires final DRB approval prior to final TRC approval.”
“Preserve the pine trees as per the BZA-SD approval.”
The second letters labelled “2nd Review”
104 comments, 55 of them from Stormwater, among them:
“Provide critical line boundary approval from SCDHEC.”
“Show the location of the concrete washout area.”
By the portal's round 4, only Stormwater and Zoning still sent it back; round 5 was approved.
| Plan | Rounds | Days, filing to approval | Letters held for rounds |
|---|---|---|---|
| New 20,000 sq ft multi-family building (the one followed) | 5 | 450 | 1-4 |
| New 8,500 sq ft office building | 4 | 462 | 1-3 |
| Two new buildings, 4 homes | 5 | 506 | 1-4 |
Method and limits
- Source
- The City's TRC portal records (submittals, department verdicts, dates) and the City's comment letters, as read into our database: 1,291 TRC case numbers at the City of Charleston, read 2026-10-16. Every figure was measured by a saved query, run twice, with identical results.
- Dates
- The filing date is the date held on the case record (1,279 of 1,291 cases have one). The approval date is the completion date of the latest submittal the portal marks approved.
- Rounds
- Rounds are the portal's submittal versions; for a case with more than one plan sequence, the highest version is used.
- Statuses
- 282 cases (22%) show a status we cannot yet settle from the portal's wording; they are counted neither as approved nor as not approved.
- Comment letters
- Held for 716 of the 1,291 cases (55%); the comment figures describe those cases only. Later letters can carry earlier comments forward with the applicant's reply, so the page counts first-round comments only.
- Departments
- 12,383 of the 31,857 first-round comments (39%) print no department, mostly comments drawn on the plans; department shares are of the 19,474 that do.
- Paperwork or design
- The definition was written before counting. Two readers labelled the same 200 random first-round comments separately: 92 and 102 of the 200 were paperwork, and they gave the same answer on paperwork-or-not for 174 of the 200. So the page says “about half”, never one exact share. A word rule over all 31,857 first-round comments finds at least 28% (8,951), a floor: it misses about a third of what a person calls paperwork.
- Repeated requests
- A case is counted when its comments carry the request's words.
What the data could not support
- One exact paperwork share for every comment: the best word rule agrees with a person 71 times in 100, so the page says “about half” and uses the rule only as a floor.
- That applicants keep failing the same comments: about 12% of first-round comments come back word for word in round 2 (750 of 6,075, on 208 cases whose letters list fresh comments each round), and the ones that come back most are standing conditions that can only close at the end, such as posting the address or bringing another agency's permit once it is issued. That is the process working.
- The department behind every comment: 39% of first-round comments print none.
- Comment figures for all 1,291 cases: letters are held for 716.
- Whether review got faster or slower over the years: recent years have many open cases, so a year-by-year time would mislead.
- That the City is slow: not our claim, and not shown. The first review comes back in a median of 27 days; most of the time is rounds of revision, on both sides.
City of Charleston TRC portal records and comment letters, read 2026-10-16.