Hitting snag with Gov't bureaucracy in permitting

[Dan Thomas]

This is my first development project. I am building a brewery / restaurant in my home town. Knowing what I don't know I hired a reputable civil engineering firm to handle my site plan. It has taken WAY longer than I expected, which is ok. My issue is that we are finally through planning and I am at my last step before construction which is obtaining a curb cut permit from NHDOT. They had several trivial issues with my application (which was submitted through the engineering firm) but they had one major issue. We knew we did not comply with the sight distance requirement of 400' in each direction for the location of the curb cut. We have 400' in one direction and 3xx' in the other. We do comply with federal AASHTO guidelines and used that to justify our stance. The DOT is not willing to work with us and is insisting I redo my site plan to move the location of the curb cut to a location that they deem "better", but still does not meet their requirements. I have escalated to the governors office and have been assigned a liason but have not gotten anywhere really. The DOTs position is that we should have consulted with them concurrently in the design phase and because we didnt we took on this risk.

My questions:

1. Are there other levels of escalation available to me that are fast? Phase 1 of my build is an outdoor beer garden so it will be seasonal and we are a few weeks out from that season. My project dies for the year if I don't have that permit by the end of next week.

2. Should my engineer have known to consult DOT during his design and was this an error in his judgment or is this a normal or unforeseen circumstance?

My engineer did briefly mention to me this was a risk but felt comfortable defending our position based on our compliance with AASHTO and we never discussed again.