Records made when work is approved

Overview

The organizing argument of this category is simple to state and awkward to live with. These eight records look alike in a permit history and represent wholly different levels of scrutiny — from a full City plan review by municipal reviewers, through a privately certified submission that no City reviewer examined, down to an over-the-counter issue against a description of work with no plans submitted and no review of method at all. Printed in a permit list they are rows of similar width. Two permits on the same block, for similar work, in the same year, can sit at opposite ends of that range, and the format gives a reader no clue which is which.

The eight records, and what separates them

The building permit is the base object: the City's written authorization for construction, alteration, repair, demolition or change of occupancy. The Municipal Code makes it unlawful to carry out that work without one unless it is exempt, at section 14A-4-401.1 of the Chicago Construction Codes. Everything else in this category is either a route to a building permit, a specialized variant of one, or a separate approval that has to exist before one can issue.

Three of the records are review routes, and the route is what determines who read the drawings:

• Standard plan review — City plan reviewers examined the submitted drawings. The Department's homeowner guide describes this route for small to mid-size construction and renovation, bounded in that document at buildings up to 80 feet, residential properties up to 49 units and commercial properties under 150,000 square feet. This is the route against which the others are defined.
• Self-certification — an Illinois-licensed architect or structural engineer, registered with the Department, certified that the drawings comply with the code, and the Department's plan review was skipped. The record proves a licensed private professional signed a statement. It does not prove a City plan reviewer agreed, because no City plan reviewer looked. The rules governing the program as published in 2018 set out eligibility by occupancy class, height and floor area; whether those rules remain operative in that form is not established here, and no audit rate or enforcement outcome for the program is published anywhere this site could locate.
• Developer Services — the route for large and complex projects, which the guide describes as buildings over 80 feet, residential buildings of 50 or more units and foundations 12 feet or deeper. Review happened, and part of it may have been carried out by third-party reviewers rather than by the City.

A fourth, the Easy Permit, removes review altogether, because there is nothing to review. It covers repair and replacement work that needs no architectural plans — window and door replacement, tuckpointing, chimney repair, small sheds and garages, light fixtures, sewer repair — and the guide states such permits are generally approved the day of application. An Easy Permit proves the City was told what would be done and took a fee. It does not prove anybody evaluated how.

The remaining three are approvals of a different kind. The zoning certificate — the Certificate of Zoning Compliance — is issued by the Department of Planning and Development rather than the Department of Buildings, and it is the only Chicago record that certifies how many residential dwelling units at a property are legal. It is required when residential property with five or fewer dwelling units is transferred or sold, and it does not apply to condominiums or cooperatives. The operative test in the zoning ordinance is that a building with multiple kitchens or cooking facilities is treated as containing multiple units unless the extra facilities are clearly accessory. The kitchen, in other words, is the evidence. The porch permit governs the most consequential residential structure in the city and the one most often rebuilt without a record, since routine maintenance, non-structural replacement where no violation exists, and porches under six feet off the ground with no more than 50 square feet of landing all require no permit. The demolition permit sits on top of an unusually long chain of prerequisite approvals from other departments — public health, streets and sanitation, transportation, water management — each of which leaves its own trace, which makes it the permit that proves the most about process compliance before work began.

What none of them establishes

Two things, and they are the same two for all eight.

None of these records establishes that the work was done. Nothing in a permit record marks the work as begun, finished, or done as described. The permit data's work description field is the City's record of what was authorized; there is no field anywhere recording what was built. The City's published description of the data states that work under a permit may not begin until the applicable permit fee is paid, and that the issue date is the date the City determined the permit was ready to issue subject to payment. An issue date is therefore not a start date.

And none of them establishes that the work was inspected. Inspection is a separate event producing a separate record, governed by a different part of the department, and the published permit data carries no inspection outcome at all. That is the boundary between this category and the next one, and it is the most important line on the site.

There is one more absence worth carrying into every page here: the published permit data excludes permits that were voided or revoked after issuance. A revoked permit does not appear flagged as revoked. It disappears. So the absence of a permit at an address is not proof that none was ever issued, and the public record is structurally incapable of showing a reader that one was withdrawn.

Sources: Guide to Building Permits, City of Chicago Department of Buildings, October 2019, which states its code information was correct as of July 2017; and Building Permits dataset description and field definitions, City of Chicago.