Construction Market Reports

7 Newly Permitted Chicago Projects Worth Watching

October 25, 2026 · By PermitScope Research

Chicago issued a lot of permits in the last verified PermitScope cycle. The useful question is not how many. It is which projects are big enough, recent enough, and documented well enough to be worth a subcontractor’s attention first.

This list answers that question with a stated rule, not a hunch. We took the verified Chicago cycle (issue dates September 24 to October 22, 2026; 2,300 qualifying permits grouped into 2,043 distinct projects), looked at the 302 projects whose newest permit was issued in the final three days of the window, October 20 to 22, and ranked them by stated value in the record. Each project below rests on a single permit, carries no conflicting values across permits, and states a value of at least $500, so the ranking is clean. All seven permits were re-verified against the live City of Chicago record on October 25, 2026, each returning exactly one record with matching address, issue date, stated value, and contractor typing.

Together the seven state $117,178,360 in filer-reported value. That headline needs its warning label: stated values are what the filer reported to the city, not verified budgets, and a permit authorizes work. It does not say any scope is open, unfilled, or being bid. What a permit does give you is an early, public, checkable signal of where work is starting. Reading the scope text, not just the value, is what separates a lead from a headline.

1. 1331 S Wells St, $94,000,000, issued October 20

Permit 101084000, new construction. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is Pepper Construction Company.

The record describes an enclosure only permit for a 4-story stadium with no basement, on piles. Read the limits in the scope before the value impresses you: the permit states no MEP work, and it points to separate permits for piles (101075594), shallow foundations (101079463), and superstructure (101080382). This is the largest value in the three-day slice, and also the clearest lesson in this list: the biggest permit can be one slice of a project, not the whole project, and the trades it covers are the ones its scope names.

Inferred trades in the corrected PermitScope dataset: none listed for this permit. The enclosure scope is the documented work.

2. 1060 W Addison St, $6,500,000, issued October 21

Permit 101087623, renovation and alteration. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is Shamrock Decorating Inc.

The record describes installation of a new forced-air and drain system for the ball field, with new equipment located on the right field side of the stadium, underneath the stadium. The work includes the forced air unit, ductwork connecting the unit to the field, and ductwork connecting the unit to a furnace above the concourse.

Two reading notes. First, the record also names electrical, plumbing, and ventilation contractors, so several parties are already named on this job in the public record. Second, the general contractor typing is filer-declared: the city record types the party that way, and PermitScope reports the typing as the record states it, without claiming we verified the role beyond the record.

3. 3701 W Ogden Ave, $5,400,000, issued October 20

Permit 101086222, renovation and alteration. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is Valenti Builders, Inc.

The record describes interior and minor exterior alterations to an existing one-story school: minor demolition of interior partitions, new ceilings, new floor finishes, minor new partitions, new exterior lighting at the entrance, a new fire protection system, new interior lighting, and one-for-one replacement of all existing plumbing fixtures. No change to building use, area, or construction type.

This is what a well-documented alteration looks like. The scope names the systems, so a reader can tell which trades the job documents without guessing from the value.

Inferred trades in the corrected PermitScope dataset, inferred from the documented scope under the Chicago-local audited rules: Hauling, Electrical, and Plumbing Fixtures, in addition to the trades named on the permit itself.

4. 1014 N Spaulding Ave, $5,228,360, issued October 22

Permit 101087126, new construction. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is TM1 Construction, Inc.

The record describes a full building permit for a 5-story building with 40 dwelling units and a basement, a 24-car garage on floor 1, decks, balconies on floors 3 to 5, a rooftop stair enclosure, an elevator over-run, one exterior loading berth, full sprinklers, 40 on-site bicycle parking spaces, and trash storage at floor 1.

This is the newest permit on the list, issued on the last day of the verified window, and the only full new residential building among the seven. Its record also names electrical, masonry, plumbing, refrigeration, and ventilation contractors.

Inferred trades in the corrected PermitScope dataset, inferred from the documented scope under the Chicago-local audited rules: Excavation, Concrete and Foundation, Framing, Roofing, Stucco and Siding, and Landscaping.

5. 1653 W Congress Pkwy, $3,000,000, issued October 21

Permit 101086833, renovation and alteration. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is Bear Construction Company.

The record describes interior alterations of an existing level 4 main street corridor, with incidental business use areas, within an institutional occupancy building. That is the whole scope statement.

Place this one next to the school at 3701 W Ogden Ave. Both state seven-figure values. One scope names its systems line by line; this one names a location and a use. The value tells you the scale the filer reported. The scope tells you how much you can actually judge. A thin scope is not a bad project, but it is a weaker lead, because the record itself gives you less to match your trade against.

Inferred trades in the corrected PermitScope dataset, inferred from the documented scope under the Chicago-local audited rules: Drywall, Painting, and Flooring. Treat that inference for what it is: a reading of a short scope, labeled as inferred.

6. 1004 W Hubbard St, $2,000,000, issued October 20

Permit 101080040, new construction. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is Summit Design & Build, LLC.

The record describes caissons, shallow foundations, underground utilities, level 1 steel framing and decking, and masonry stair and elevator cores to the top of the building, for a 7-story mixed-use building with 70 apartment units and 20 interior at-grade parking stalls.

Like the stadium at 1331 S Wells St, this permit is a phase, not the whole build. Its $2,000,000 stated value covers the early structural scope the record names, not the finished building. Ranking projects by a single permit’s value understates phased projects and overstates nothing about them; the honest read is that the value belongs to the scope printed beside it.

Inferred trades in the corrected PermitScope dataset, inferred from the documented scope under the Chicago-local audited rules: Excavation, Concrete and Foundation, Framing, Roofing, Stucco and Siding, and Landscaping.

7. 222 S Riverside Plz, Unit 2250, $1,050,000, issued October 21

Permit 101086447, renovation and alteration. The party typed as general contractor in the city record is Leopardo Construction Inc.

The record describes a tenant buildout in an existing office building on the 22nd floor, office suite 2250: new partitions, doors, ceilings, lighting, millwork, and finishes, with associated electrical, mechanical, and plumbing work as per plans.

This is the smallest value of the seven and the most ordinary job on the list, which is exactly why it belongs here. Most permitted work is not a stadium. A documented seven-figure buildout with its systems stated in the record is the kind of project a specialty subcontractor can evaluate in minutes, because the record does the first round of qualifying for them.

Inferred trades in the corrected PermitScope dataset, inferred from the documented scope under the Chicago-local audited rules: Framing, Drywall, Painting, Electrical, Plumbing Fixtures, and Flooring, in addition to the associated work the record names.

What these seven show, in total

• Recency changes the list. Only one of the seven, the Spaulding Ave building, is a complete new building described in a single permit. The rest are alterations, an enclosure-only phase, or a foundations and cores phase. A value ranking of a three-day slice surfaces the work that is actually moving now, not a hall of fame.
• Scope text decides lead quality. Two permits state their limits in plain terms (enclosure only, no MEP work; a phase covering foundations and cores). One states almost nothing. The values alone would have hidden all three facts.
• Named parties matter. Every project here names a party typed as general contractor in the city record, and several name trade contractors as well. A project with parties already named in the record is a different starting point from an anonymous permit, and PermitScope reporting keeps those roles exactly as the record types them.
• The full picture stays matched and personal. This list is a public sample ranked by one rule. It is not a matched digest: it does not filter by your trade, your territory, or your job size, and it does not claim any scope on any project is open.

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Sources and method

City of Chicago Open Data, Building Permits dataset (ydr8-5enu), publisher City of Chicago. PermitScope analysis, October 2026: 30-day cycle with issue dates September 24 to October 22, 2026; 2,756 records fetched, 2,300 qualifying permits grouped by site address into 2,043 distinct projects, reconciliation check 0. Selection rule for this article: projects whose newest permit was issued October 20 to 22, 2026 (302 projects), ranked by stated value, filtered to single-permit projects with no conflicting values and a stated value of at least $500. Values are the filer’s reported_cost in the city record. General contractor wording means a contact the city record types as CONTRACTOR-GENERAL CONTRACTOR; that typing is filer-declared. Inferred trades come from the Chicago-local audited trade rules (trade_rules_fixed.py) applied to the corrected dataset (projects-corrected.json); they are inferred from documented scope and are labeled as inferred wherever they appear. Each featured permit (101084000, 101087623, 101086222, 101087126, 101086833, 101080040, 101086447) was re-verified against the live dataset on October 25, 2026, each returning exactly one record with matching fields. Related reading: Permits Are Not Projects, on why grouped projects, not raw permit counts, are the honest unit.