Illinois
Oak Park, IL permit fees and requirements
Oak Park prices a building permit from area and construction type:
Area (SF) × the ICC square-foot construction cost (CC) × .0194 for new construction and additions, or × .008 for remodel and tenant-buildout work with a printed minimum of $300 residential / $500 multi-family or commercial. The chart CC is read from is reproduced inside the fee schedule itself — 27 use groups across nine construction types, with five cells printed NP, where the Village publishes no cost at all. There is no valuation field on the schedule. Plan review is a separate list charged on top ($500 per dwelling unit for a new one- or two-family home, $500 per floor for multifamily and commercial), and the electrical and plumbing trades are permits of their own at $100–$200 per circuit, unit or system.
Permit costs we have worked out
Each page shows the fee components, the formula the jurisdiction uses, and a worked example you can follow by hand.
Estimate your potential Oak Park permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Oak Park building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Oak Park electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Oak Park plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Oak Park
Oak Park is a village of roughly 54,000 people bordering Chicago's West Side, governed by an Annual Fee Ordinance whose construction-fee article the Development Services Department administers. The 2026 fees took effect March 1, 2026.
The fee's arithmetic is the thing to understand first, because it is not a valuation system. The ICC publishes a square-foot construction cost for each use group and construction type — from $69.64 for a Group U building of Type VB up to $473.85 for a hospital of Type IA — and the Village multiplies that published figure by the area and by a small factor (.0194 new, .008 remodel). A 1,000-square-foot one-family home in Type IIIA is 1,000 × $195.98 × .0194 = $3,802.01. The same home priced as a remodel would be 1,000 × $195.98 × .008 = $1,567.84. Neither number involves what the owner is actually paying a contractor.
The trades are structurally different from most of this site's jurisdictions. The Village's permits page explains why electrical and plumbing need "a separate permit from a general construction permit" — specialised skills, older housing stock, water damage — and the schedule prices those separate permits per unit of work: $100 per circuit for electrical alterations, $175 per system installation, $100 per unit for plumbing alterations. A kitchen remodel therefore generates at least two permits here, and this site prices each on its own page.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
Oak Park does not use a project valuation. The building fee is Area × CC × .0194 (new construction and additions) or Area × CC × .008 (remodel, tenant buildout), where CC is the ICC's published square-foot construction cost for the use group and construction type, read from the chart printed inside the fee schedule. The applicant supplies the area, the use group and the construction type; the cost comes from the ICC, not from a contract price.
Two adjustments the schedule notes on the chart's face: private garages take the Utility (miscellaneous) row, and shell-only buildings deduct 20% from the chart figure. Unfinished basements in R-3 homes are priced at $31.50 per square foot in addition to the above-grade area.
The trade permits are not valuation-priced either: they are published amounts per circuit, unit or system, so a plumbing alteration touching five units is $500.00 regardless of what the fixtures cost.
Who to contact
The office that issues the permit, with the details we have verified. Confirm current hours before travelling.
What these fees do not include
The list is not a disclaimer: on a new house the fees left out can outweigh the permit fee several times over. Every entry here is stated on the permit page as well.
Not included in our estimates
This profile describes the construction fees of the Annual Fee Ordinance that this site computes. It excludes:
- The permit application deposits — $100 residential, $200 commercial, non-refundable but applied to the permit fee. They are paid up front and credited back, so the net fee is unchanged, but the applicant fronts them.
- The HVAC/mechanical rows ($100 per unit, $175 per system), which are priced on the same schedule but issued as mechanical permits this site does not publish a page for.
- The fire-protection inspection rows — fire alarm and fire sprinkler final inspections at $25 per unit with a $350 minimum, and the Fire Department's own plan reviews at $200 and $400 — whose counts are not inputs this calculator asks for.
- Zoning applications, water service and ROW fees, the sustainable-construction credits, and the penalty rows (work without a permit starts at a $300 minimum or double the fee).
- Demolition, which the schedule prices per structure or per square foot as the *greater* of two products — a construction this site names rather than computes.
Official sources for this jurisdiction
The documents these figures are transcribed from. Where a source contradicts itself we keep both readings and say so on the permit page.
- Fee schedule (PDF)CityPrimary source
Village of Oak Park 2026 Construction Fees (Annual Fee Ordinance §7-8-1)
One document, updated 01/26/2026 on its face, carrying the ordinance's own heading 'Construction Fee(s) Effective on March 1st, 2026'. Read with pdftotext; the ICC chart was transcribed cell by cell and re-checked against the schedule's own arithmetic (an R-3 Type IIIA building at $195.98 × .0194 × area). The chart and its footnotes are credited to ICC Building Valuation Data, August 2025.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Village of Oak Park — Building Permits
The Village's permit information page, and the authority for the stand-alone trade structure: 'A separate permit from a general construction permit is necessary because electrical work requires specialized skills and knowledge', with the same reasoning for plumbing. It also records that owners of single-family homes may pull their own plumbing permit by affidavit.