Land Planning

How we approach land planning

The gate that every project has to clear.

Land planning is Phase 3 in Bailey's 9-phase process, and it's the gate. Get it wrong and the engineering fees get spent twice — once on the design that didn't get approved, and once on the redesign that does. Get it right and the engineering moves forward on solid ground, with the political support, the agency sign-offs, and the community engagement already done.

Bailey starts every entitlement engagement the same way: by reading the city. We pull the comprehensive plan, the future land use map, the zoning code, and the most recent planning commission and council minutes. We look at what the city has been approving, what it's been denying, and where the political temperature sits on the kind of project our client wants to build. That context — not the code alone, but the code in the hands of the people interpreting it — is what separates a smooth entitlement from a contested one.

The preliminary layout is the next critical step. This is the conceptual land plan that determines how many lots, units, or square feet the parcel can support. It happens before formal engineering and usually before the entitlement filing. The decisions made here lock in 80% of the project's economics — lot yield, infrastructure cost, and marketability — so we treat it with the rigor it deserves, even though it doesn't feel like "real engineering" to most clients.

Agency coordination runs through the entire process. A typical Treasure Valley project requires sign-off from six to ten external agencies beyond the city itself — ACHD, the relevant irrigation district, the fire district, the health department, the school district, and often ITD or the county. Each one has independent authority to condition or stop the project, and the order in which they're engaged matters. Bailey maps the full agency list at feasibility and engages them before the first formal submittal, not after.

Neighborhood meetings and public hearings are where the political work comes to a point. Bailey runs neighborhood meetings as a core part of every entitlement — not as a checkbox, but as the single highest-leverage hour before the public hearing. We handle notification, materials, presentation, and follow-up. At the hearing itself, the work is confirming, not convincing — because the confirming work happened in the neighborhood meeting and the staff report.

The output of land planning is an approved project: entitled, platted, conditions of approval documented, agency sign-offs secured, development agreement executed (where required), and the final plat routed through the health department, highway district, county surveyor, city, and recorder. Bailey carries the project through every step.