Welcome to the City of Santa Clara's online Permit Center. The Permit Center located in City Hall, 1500 Warburton Ave., was designed with a vision of premier customer service, focused in a single location, combined with highly trained employees, advanced technology, and a constantly improving review and approval process. The Center was designed by the people who use it, the customers and the employees, and integrates successful experience from other centers. Please see permits information, forms, and guidelines for more information.
We have geared our Permit Center to provide as many "over-the-counter" reviews as possible, and to consolidate those reviews into fewer steps. Customers who used to walk from office to office to obtain information or approvals, standing in different lines, now generally visit only one office where they are greeted by a Permit Technician who will help them to obtain the proper reviews. Streamlined procedures have reduced the amount of time and the number of people required to process many projects. Single Point Contacts, a Santa Clara concept, assist applicants in proceeding through complicated projects requiring multiple reviews and public hearings.
Your comments and suggestions are important to us as we continually try to improve our process. Suggestion forms can be obtained from the receptionist's counter or by using the How are We Doing? link on this page.
Santa Clara serves a broad range of customers in the permitting process, from homeowners and contractors with small additions, to developers and businesses with large and very complex projects. The Permit Center has been designed to serve all our customers with any size project and a variety of service needs.
Permit Center Customer Service
Tel: (408) 615-2420 • Fax (408)241-3823 (Monday through Friday)
- Permit Center Hours: 8am - noon and 1pm to 5pm, except 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month (8:45am - 9:45am)
- General permits issued: 8am to 11:30am and 1pm to 4:30pm
- Plans Examiners' Hours: 8:30am to 11:45am and 1pm to 4:30pm
- Building Inspectors' Office Hours: 8:30am to 9am or by appointment
- Fire Prevention Service Hours at the Permit Center: Tuesdays through Fridays, 8am to 12 noon
- Fire Prevention Offices (1675 Lincoln Street): Please call for appointment (615-4970)
- Planning Staff Hours: 8am-12 noon and 1pm-5pm, except Thursdays (no staff available from 8:30am to 10am)
- Engineering Staff Hours: 8am-12 noon and 1pm-5pm
- The Permit Center is closed from 12 noon to 1pm
Zoning Map & General Plan Map
For your convenience, a PDF of the City of Santa Clara Zoning Map (3.65MB) and the General Plan Map (1.49 MB) are now available online. Please note that the PDF files are very large and may take several minutes to load if you are on a dial-up connection. If you have difficulty opening the PDF, you may need to refresh the page (F5) or download a newer version of Adobe Acrobat Reader.