COLUMBIANA — The city’s decision to partner with a third-party service for its commercial and residential building department has proven beneficial over the last few years.

Elevate Building Solutions Executive Director Julie Needs provided City Council with an overview of the city’s building department.

She said the city issued 60 commercial permits and 165 residential permits in 2025 for a total of 225 permits issued out of the building department that year.

“We like to break this down and compare year over year. We now have two full years we can compare,” she said.

The city began using Elevate in July of 2023 for its commercial process while residential didn’t begin until May of 2024.

Needs said that while commercial permits issued in 2024 were slightly lower than in 2023 the actual amount of money brought into the city in total investment increased.

“The total investment, total cost of project was $13.55 million in 2024. In 2025 those 60 permits actually equated to $15.15 million,” she said.

She explained the increase was due to an $8 million project in 2025.

On the residential side the city issued 185 permits in 2025 and completed 403 inspections.

Since July of 2023 the Columbiana Commercial Building Department has issued 174 total commercial permits and 270 total residential permits since May of 2024.

“Residential permitting has many more inspections requirements than commercial does. They are out a lot more often and there is a lot more activity on the residential side,” she said.

The city’s residential investment in 2025 was $13.4 million, up from close to $10 million in 2024, she said.

She added that commercial is nicely on track and they are starting to see some good consistency which helps in preparing for the next year.

She also said that Elevate has maintained an average turnaround time of six days, which is significantly less than the state allowed 30 days.

“We have maintained that for the two-and-half years that we have it,” she said.

Elevate has also created a pamphlet to help people navigate the building code and it will be available at City Hall and also on the Elevate website, elevatebuildings.com

“We as a city really appreciate the work of Julie Needs and her working with us on this project,” Mayor Rick Noel said. “We started way back in developing the thought and I think it’s as been a great relationship.”

He added that many contractors have been happy to not have to go through Columbus to get building permits.

“With the growth of our city and the development we have got going on this is an important tool,” he said.