Pontiac, MI Building Safety: Building Inspections (2026)

Section 26-54 sits in Pontiac's business licensing chapter and requires a coordinated, multi-department inspection before a new business can operate anywhere in the City. Rather than a single building inspector signing off, the code calls for a team drawn from building, electrical, fire, licensing and zoning, mechanical and plumbing staff, with the Community Development Director deciding which combination of inspectors a given business needs. In a multi-tenant building that shares common hallways and doors, the team does not have to inspect every other tenant's space, only the area the new business will occupy plus the shared common areas of the rest of the facility.

The fee for the team inspection is not a flat number: it is calculated from the number of inspectors sent out and the size of the area being inspected, so a larger space or a business needing more disciplines represented pays more. Once the inspection is finished, the Department must send the applicant a written report listing every code violation found, any permits still needed, and any work that has to be done by a licensed and registered contractor rather than the business owner. The process does not end there.

After the applicant corrects the violations identified in that report, it is the applicant's own responsibility, not the City's, to schedule the final inspections needed to get the certificate of occupancy or compliance issued. The section also once offered a limited amnesty, running only through June 30, 2014, letting an already-open, unlicensed business skip the team inspection if it could show three years of federal, state and city tax returns proving it had been operating and met zoning and other requirements.