Quartzsite building permits

Verified

Department contacts, adopted codes, permit types, fees, and gotchas for Quartzsite, Arizona.

Last verified 2026-07-07 · Source · Embed this page’s badge · Version history

Building department

Address: 465 N. Plymouth Ave. / PO Box 2812, Quartzsite, AZ 85346
Phone: 928-927-4333 ext. 601
Email: thess@quartzsiteaz.org
Office hours: Monday - Thursday, 7:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. (closed Fridays); Fax 928-927-4400. All building, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, demolition, grading, sign, and manufactured/mobile home permit applications are submitted through the Town's iWorq Citizen Portal (quartzsite.portal.iworq.net/portalhome/quartzsite) — there is no separate PDF/paper Building Permit Application form published outside the portal. The portal's own instructions direct applicants to 'submit the application and wait for the City to contact you,' with no stated numeric response time.
Website: Official site
Permit portal: Apply online at Quartzsite's portal

Inspection guide

See how inspections work in Quartzsite — sequence, scheduling & re-inspection fees.

Codes adopted

Arizona has no statewide building code for non-state buildings; codes are adopted locally. According to the International Code Council, codes are adopted locally in Arizona and are predominantly the I-codes, with different cities and counties choosing their own editions and local amendments. The Arizona State Fire Code (adopting the 2018 IFC) applies only to state and county buildings, public and private schools, and non-residential occupancies in areas without a locally adopted fire code — it does not establish a statewide residential or commercial building code floor. Each city and county adopts its own code editions independently, resulting in different I-Code years and amendment sets across jurisdictions. There is no state-mandated minimum edition; enforcement is entirely local. Always confirm the adopted edition and any local amendments with the specific jurisdiction before submitting plans.

Arizona has NO statewide mandatory building code for general construction — code adoption is a per-jurisdiction (town/city/county) authority under state enabling statutes (A.R.S. Title 9 for municipalities). The Town of Quartzsite independently adopts and administers its own construction codes through its Community Development Department / Building Safety Division; it does NOT defer to La Paz County for permitting within incorporated town limits. La Paz County separately runs its own Building, Safety & Permits Department for unincorporated areas of the county (lapaz.gov/589) — a distinct code-administration regime from the Town's own department. Despite Quartzsite's small year-round population and famously seasonal RV/gem-show tourist economy, its Building Safety Division independently adopts, amends, and enforces its own full suite of ICC technical codes (confirmed via Town Code Chapter 150 and the Development Procedures Handbook) — it is a genuinely independent building department, not a pass-through to the County. Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances, Chapter 150 (Building Regulations; Construction), via American Legal Publishing code library (codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/quartzsiteaz); La Paz County Building, Safety & Permits page (lapaz.gov/589).
International Building Code (IBC), 2018 edition, including Appendices C, I, and J, adopted by reference (Town Code § 150.15), as published by the International Code Council. Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.15 (amlegal.com), most recently amended by Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
International Residential Code (IRC), 2018 edition, including Appendices G, H, P, and Q, adopted by reference (§ 150.21), for regulating detached one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses (multiple single-family dwellings) not more than three stories in height with separate means of egress. Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.21 (amlegal.com).
National Electrical Code (NEC), 2017 edition, adopted by reference (§ 150.16), published by the National Fire Protection Association, governing electrical work in public and private buildings, mobile homes, recreational vehicles, floating buildings, yards/lots, industrial substations, and optical fiber cable. Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.16 (amlegal.com).
International Mechanical Code (IMC), 2018 edition, including Appendix A, adopted by reference (§ 150.17). Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.17 (amlegal.com), amended by Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
International Plumbing Code (IPC), 2018 edition, including Appendices C and E, adopted by reference (§ 150.18), with locally added Chapter 10 grease-trap/interceptor maintenance (§ 1005) and enforcement (§ 1006) provisions. Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.18 (amlegal.com), amended by Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
International Fire Code (IFC), 2018 edition, including Appendices B, C, D, E, F, G, and I, adopted by reference (§ 150.19). Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.19 (amlegal.com), amended by Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
International Existing Building Code (IEBC), 2018 edition, adopted by reference (§ 150.20) as the town's code for the abatement of dangerous buildings, applicable to buildings/structures that endanger life, limb, health, morals, property, safety, or public welfare. Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.20 (amlegal.com), amended by Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
International Fuel Gas Code (IFGC), 2018 edition, including Appendices A and B, adopted by reference (§ 150.22). Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.22 (amlegal.com), adopted/amended by Ord. 23-06.
International Property Maintenance Code, 2018 edition, including Appendix A, adopted by reference (§ 150.23). Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.23 (amlegal.com), Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
International Swimming Pool and Spa Code, 2018 edition, adopted by reference (§ 150.24). Source: Town of Quartzsite Code of Ordinances § 150.24 (amlegal.com), Ord. 23-06, passed 10-10-2023.
Manufactured homes, mobile homes, and park models are subject to a Town of Quartzsite Manufactured Home / Mobile Home / Park Model Set / Office Trailer Installation fee ($360.00 flat) for placement within town limits, per the Town's Schedule of Fees - Rates (2024), Schedule 2, Section 2-7; manufactured homes are additionally subject to State of Arizona regulation for the factory-built unit itself (Arizona Department of Housing, Office of Manufactured Housing, A.R.S. § 41-4001 et seq.). Source: Town of Quartzsite Schedule of Fees - Rates (2024).

Permit types & fees

New residential construction activity

New privately-owned residential construction only

Housing units authorized by building permits for new privately-owned residential construction — this is not total permit volume (no commercial permits or remodels).

Latest month (2026-05): No data reported
Trailing 12 months: No data reported
Year to date (2026 YTD): No data reported
Full year 2025: No data reported

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey (BPS), 2026-05 vintage. Census survey data — separate from the permit-requirements verification above. All Arizona building activity

Tips & gotchas

Quartzsite is a small, famously seasonal RV/gem-show and rock-hound tourist town in La Paz County (year-round population roughly 2,300-3,700 depending on source/season, swelling to an estimated 100,000+ visitors during the peak January-February gem show and RV season) — but it DOES run a genuinely independent Building Safety Division within its own Community Development Department, with its own adopted ICC code suite (2018 IBC/IRC/IMC/IPC/IEBC/IFGC/IPMC/Pool-Spa Code, 2017 NEC) and its own fee schedule. It is NOT a pass-through to La Paz County. La Paz County separately operates its own Building, Safety & Permits Department (lapaz.gov/589) exclusively for unincorporated areas of the county — a distinct office from the Town's own Building Safety Division. Do not direct incorporated-Quartzsite permit questions to the County office or vice versa.
Arizona has no statewide mandatory building code — the Town of Quartzsite independently adopts and amends its own construction codes through Town Code Chapter 150, most recently updated via Ordinance 23-06 (passed October 10, 2023). The current amlegal.com supplement reflects local legislation through Ordinance 24-02 (passed 6-25-2024).
ALL permit types (Building, Electrical, Plumbing, Mechanical, Grading, Demolition, Sign, Manufactured/Mobile Home) are submitted through a SINGLE iWorq Citizen Portal 'Building Permit Application' (quartzsite.portal.iworq.net/portalhome/quartzsite) — there is no separate paper/PDF application form published outside the portal, and no separate trade-specific application workflow beyond specifying scope within the single online application.
MAJOR CONFIRMED GAP flagged across every permit type in this file: the Town of Quartzsite does NOT publish a numeric building-permit review timeframe anywhere — not in Town Code § 150.02 (silent on timing), not in § 150.03 (the uniform Chapter 150 local-amendments section), not in the Development Procedures Handbook (Ord. 23-05, dated 8/8/2023 — a 22-page scanned/image-only PDF with no text layer, rendered to PNG and read visually page-by-page; its Article II Section 2 Building Permit process states only that fee determination 'may take up to 24 hours' and that plans are reviewed by Town Staff or a third-party consultant 'if necessary,' with no day-count for that review step), not in the 2024 Schedule of Fees - Rates (630-line text extraction, no timeframe language), and not on the iWorq portal's own Building Permit Application landing page (states only 'submit the application and wait for the City to contact you'). A.R.S. § 9-835 requires municipalities to establish and POST their own administrative-completeness/substantive-review timeframes but supplies no statutory default figure when a municipality has not done so — its subsection (O) merely exempts sub-7-working-day licenses from the full dual-timeframe posting requirement, not an issuance mandate. A purported Arizona statute mandating a fixed 7-day single-family-dwelling permit deadline surfaced only in preliminary AI web-search summaries, NOT in the actual enacted text of A.R.S. Title 9 §§ 831-843 (checked directly against azleg.gov: § 9-836 is 'License application process; notice,' unrelated; a candidate further section returned HTTP 404) — this claim could not be verified and is deliberately NOT asserted in this file. This is a real, exhaustively-chased research gap, not an assumption or a lazy first-pass conclusion.
The Town's Building/Electrical/Plumbing/Grading permit fees are calculated DYNAMICALLY inside the iWorq portal per ICC Table 1-A (Building/Electrical/Plumbing) or Table J-1 (Grading), NOT published as a static dollar valuation table anywhere on the Town's own site — this differs from Buckeye and Parker (both of which publish explicit dollar-figure valuation tables in their own Fee Schedule PDFs). Applicants cannot precompute an exact fee without submitting through the portal.
The Town's building-permit-exemption threshold is a SMALL structure GREATER THAN 120 square feet requires a permit (§ 150.02) — smaller than several other Arizona cities in this dataset (e.g., Buckeye's 200 sq ft threshold).
Manufactured Home / Mobile Home / Park Model Set / Office Trailer installation is billed a single flat $360 fee covering all these unit types together (Schedule 2, Section 2-7) — likely reflecting Quartzsite's significant seasonal RV/park-model population, distinct from Parker's per-unit-type $300 fee structure.
The Town's 2024 Schedule of Fees - Rates does not itemize standalone fee lines for every permit type named on its own Applications & Forms page (e.g., no explicit 'Demolition' or 'Sign Permit' dollar figure was found) — confirmed gaps for those specific fee amounts are flagged in the relevant permit-type entries rather than assumed.
The Development Procedures Handbook (Ord. 23-05) is primarily a ZONING/subdivision procedures document (adopted under Town Code Chapter 155 Zoning) that happens to also cover the Building Permit application process in one section (Article II, Section 2) — it should not be mistaken for a dedicated building-permit review-timeframe guideline of the kind some other AZ cities in this dataset publish (e.g., Buckeye's Plan Review Timeframes Guideline).