Accounts Spotlight: West Hollywood, CA

Portals: Zoning and Business Portals available at https://openmybusiness.weho.org/

Timeline: Jan 31, 2019 to May 8, 2019

On May 8, the City of West Hollywood and the Chamber of Commerce launched their OpenCounter Zoning and Business Portals as part of Small Business Week. The unveiling seminar, “Everything You Need to Know about Doing Business in the City of West Hollywood but Didn’t Know You Needed to Ask” included representatives from various departments in City Hall answering frequently asked questions on the topic as well as a demo from OpenCounter, walking through this new resource for potential small business owners.

Notably…In most jurisdictions we’ve worked with, business licenses are administered by Finance or Police. In West Hollywood, however, regulatory business licenses are housed within the City’s Code Compliance division of Public Works and include inspections by Code Compliance staff and/or additional land use permits administered by the Planning Department. While the City’s website provides a general overview of the process, OpenCounter takes this one step further by associating the regulatory requirement back to land use codes and thus surfacing all of the requirements across the City for nearly 30 different business types in one place.

City Sponsor: Economic Development