The slowest zoning change approved this year took 714 days

Most were approved in a little less than four months

Alongside the Chicago zoning changes map and notifications features that we launched three weeks ago, we have a treasure trove of new data to study.

Here are some nuggets for zoning changes approved by City Council in 2017:

118 zoning changes have been passed by the City Council this year

The average time to get approved is 116 days (or nearly four months); this doesn’t include any time an applicant may have spent negotiating with an alder about their proposal’s particulars prior to submitting the zoning change ordinance

The longest time to get approval was 714 days; this was for ordinance 2015–2682 to approve amendments to the planned development that controls the land under the Chicago School for Agricultural Sciences, a Chicago Public School, to be able to add a horse riding arena

The shortest time to get approval was 35 days; 16 zoning changes were approved this quickly

The second slowest approval time was 609 days; this was for a zoning change request from a homeowner who wanted to demolish an existing house and build a new single-family house of a size appropriate for a standard Chicago lot (125x25) despite the lot being much smaller (90x24)

What else do you want to know about zoning changes in Chicago?