What the pre-flight actually does
You tell GeorgeSt about your project, drop in your plan set, and we run it through the same checks your submittal will face at the counter. Every finding is traced to a specific ordinance section, a specific board meeting, or a specific staff interpretation.
The result is a document you can forward to your architect, your attorney, or the zoning counter — not a marketing summary. Every flag links back to the primary source record.
01 · Design Review
We cross-reference your plans against the Board of Architectural Review design guidelines (BAR-L and BAR-S), precedent from the past three years of BAR decisions, and any staff interpretations that apply. Materials, massing, windows, roof profiles, and historic district fit.
02 · Zoning
We check your project against the Charleston zoning ordinance — use by right, height, FAR, lot coverage, setbacks, parking ratios, and any overlay district requirements that apply to your parcel.
03 · Building & Safety
We run your plans against the currently-adopted International Residential Code and International Building Code (South Carolina adoption). Structural, life-safety, energy compliance, and accessibility.
04 · Stormwater & DHEC
We check your impervious coverage against the City's stormwater ordinance, your parcel against the current FEMA flood map, and — for coastal projects — proximity to the SCDES BCM (formerly DHEC OCRM) critical line. Peninsula tidal modeling included.
05 · Historic Tax Credits
We evaluate your project against the Federal Historic Tax Credit and the South Carolina State HTC. For contributing income-producing properties, this layer alone is often the largest financial finding in the report.
Every pre-flight returns a readiness score from 0 to 100 plus a letter grade (A through F). The score weights every finding across all five layers: critical issues count more than cautions, informational items don't reduce your score, and opportunities (like Federal HTC eligibility) surface as upside.
The grade is calibrated against 1,669 actual Charleston County board decisions. A B+ means roughly what a B+ means in the real world: high probability of approval with revisions. A C means real friction ahead. An A means submit it.
A web document at a permanent link, printable as PDF, re-runnable whenever the ordinance changes. Each finding includes the statement, the detail, citations that link to the source record, and a recommendation when action is needed.
The report is structured the way your attorney would structure a memo: executive summary on top, findings grouped by review layer, source index at the bottom. You can forward the link to your architect, your attorney, or staff at the zoning counter.
National permit tools treat Charleston like any other zip code. GeorgeSt doesn't. We're calibrated specifically to Charleston County's 12 municipalities, to the BAR-L and BAR-S docket histories, to the peninsula's tidal modeling, and to how Charleston staff actually read a submittal.
Every finding links back to the source record. If you want to verify a flag, you can read the meeting minute or ordinance section that produced it.