Known by some as “a difficult city to do business in,” Claremont is looking to fix the stereotype.

Several ordinance changes will be taking effect in the next few months that aim to make the process of setting up shop in the city of trees more business friendly.

The changes, reviewed by the Planning Commission last week, were made in an attempt to be more flexible with preexisting code requirements, according to Brian Desatnik, director of community development.

“We are trying to promote commercial development. It’s a priority,” Mr. Desatnik said. “We are always trying to be more business friendly, but we are hampered by the code. We are trying to fix that in a small way.”

City officials have been gathering information to make changes and clarifications to its municipal codes for a couple years, according to Mr. Desatnik. For the most part, the changes have been surface level, consisting of grammatical revisions and sentence tweaking to clear up confusing passages.

A few changes, however, like the review process for prospective businesses, required a bit more attention and clarification. Some new code changes would reduce the number of commission reviews needed to approve new businesses in the city’s mixed-use spaces. Some of the spaces zoned for mixed-use development include lots along Claremont’s Foothill Corridor west of Colby Circle and Pepper Tree Square.

Revisions include no longer requiring 3 different commission reviews in order to approve a project. Currently, new development must be reviewed 3 separate times by 2 commissions: architectural and planning. The plan gets a preliminary review from the Architectural Commission, a secondary review from the Planning Commission, and final approval again by architecture. 

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