Green Bay Building Permits & Inspections (Community & Economic Development)
- Phone
- (920) 448-3300
Wisconsin
Green Bay, WI permit fees and requirements
Green Bay prices every trade by what the building is:
a one- or two-family house, a multi-family building, or commercial work — and then by what the job is. New construction is $0.01 per square foot in a house and $0.14 in multi-family; plumbing is $7.00 a fixture in a house and $8.00 above it; electrical wiring is $0.05 a foot in a house and $0.09 in multi-family, with commercial work priced either by area or, at the applicant's choice, by a project-cost ladder from $100.00 to $600.00; mechanical (HVAC) work prices the same footage at $0.05 and $0.09, with the commercial rate split by system kind — ductless unit heaters $0.05, ducted or hydronic $0.09 — and a furnace replacement a flat $75.00 or $100.00. The fire sprinkler row is per head with the schedule's own floor and ceiling: $2.50 a head, at least $70.00, never above $200.00.
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 Green Bay permit fee with our Building Permit Fee Calculator.
| Permit | Category | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Green Bay building permit cost | structural | 2026-09-25 |
| Green Bay electrical permit cost | electrical | 2026-09-25 |
| Green Bay plumbing permit cost | plumbing | 2026-09-25 |
| Green Bay mechanical (HVAC) permit cost | mechanical | 2026-09-25 |
Local context
What is specific to Green Bay
One schedule, four trades, three property classes. The City of Green Bay Fee Schedule is a single ordinance-keyed PDF — §8-47 plan approval, §8-360 building and plumbing permits, §8-451 electrical, §8-478 mechanical — whose fee column is headed 2026 Fee, dated to January 1, 2026 by the City's own permit-guides page. Every trade section is split the same way the applications ask it: the licensed-contractor electrical form prints the occupancy boxes (Single-Family, Two-Family, Multi-Family, Commercial, Educational, Manufacturing, Other), and the schedule prices the same scope at two or three rates across them, so the class is a fact the reader supplies rather than a determination the City makes.
Two rows here are firsts for this dataset. The fire suppression row publishes both a floor and a ceiling in its own parenthetical — $2.50 per head, $70.00 minimum, up to $200.00 — and the calculator clamps the rule by exactly those bounds. And the commercial electrical section offers two ways to price one job: area rates at $0.05 or $0.09 a foot, or a project-cost ladder from $100.00 to $600.00 plus $100.00 per $100,000 above $300,000. The ladder reads the application's Value of work field and replaces the area rates; it never adds to them.
The document itself was read the hard way. The schedule's columns mispair under a layout-mode extraction exactly as Boston's sheet did — water heater handed the lawn sprinkler amount, the commercial section offset by a row — and only the table-mode extraction pairs every row cleanly; all three were run, and the amounts the City's own pages restate agree across all of them. What the pages add beyond prices is the licensing map: state dwelling-contractor credentials verified by the City before a one- or two-family permit issues, Green Bay-licensed electricians for all services and wiring, Wisconsin master plumbers for the plumbing work, and — the one trade the City relaxed — HVAC contractors no longer city-licensed, state licence only.
What is absent: no plan review percentage anywhere on the schedule (the §8-47 plan-approval fees are flat application-stage charges, and the residential plan rows are printed at $0.00 — energy calculations and the fixture list are filed, not priced), and Wisconsin levies no state surcharge of its own on a local permit. The penalty the City does publish is a doubling: failure to obtain a building permit may double the fees, add a municipal citation of over $500, and see the work ordered redone or removed.
Valuation
How valuation is determined here
The basis for building, electrical and mechanical work is the building's square footage, charged exactly as the reader gives it — every area row is marked "(per sq. foot)" and no row prints a minimum, a rounding rule or a band, so 1,500 square feet at $0.05 is $75.00 and not a stepped table. The rate on that area is decided by the property class: a penny a foot to build a house, fourteen cents in multi-family, seven or fourteen in commercial depending on the building group the Inspection Division assigns.
The one exception to area is commercial electrical, where the schedule offers a second basis: the project cost ladder, reading the application's "Value of work" field, six bands from $100.00 to $600.00 plus $100.00 for each $100,000 above $300,000. Area and cost are alternatives — the ladder is priced from value and the area rates from the floor plan, and the calculator charges one or the other, never both. The ladder's per-$100,000 line prices no fraction of a step, so a project $50,000 over the threshold pays nothing on that line.
Plumbing never reads an area or a cost: the fee is the fixture count at $7.00 or $8.00, with the device rows (water heater, sprinkler heads) beside it. The sprinkler row is the one per-unit fee in the schedule with published bounds — $2.50 a head, $70.00 minimum, $200.00 maximum — so a ten-head system charges its $70.00 floor and an eighty-head system its $200.00 ceiling.
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
These figures are Green Bay's own building, electrical, plumbing and mechanical (HVAC) permit fees, as printed on the City's 2026 fee schedule. They are not a project cost, and they exclude:
- The §8-47 plan-approval fees — $75.00 or $125.00 for a principal-use building plan, $50.00 or $125.00 accessory, $125.00 for the HVAC and plumbing system plans, $75.00 for a sign structural plan — application-stage charges on the same sheet, separate from the permit fees these pages price. The residential plan rows are printed at $0.00 (energy calculations and the fixture list are filed, not priced).
- The permit doubling and the citation. Failure to obtain a building permit may double the fees, add a municipal citation of over $500, and see work ordered redone or removed — a multiplier on a fee that has not been computed, named rather than modelled.
- The roofing, siding and move rows — roofing replacement and siding at $100.00 plus $0.01/sq ft, and move building at $75.00/$100.00 plus a $0.14/sq ft foundation-area fee: mixed flat-plus-area shapes for scopes these four pages do not carry.
- The accessory-structure grid — curb cut, culvert, driveway, landscape structures, fencing, hot tub, swimming pool, pond, satellite receiver and tower structure at $75.00 or $100.00 each, and subdivision signage at $50.00 plus $0.50/sq ft.
- The external plumbing rows — water service connection, sanitary sewer connection and storm sewer connection at $50.00 each, Palmer valve $75.00, back water valve $50.00, lawn sprinkler RPV $75.00/$100.00, sewer cap $100.00, private well operation $125.00.
- The illuminated-sign and rooming-house rows — $100.00 for an internally or externally illuminated sign (commercial electrical), and §8-629's $50.00 plus $10.00 per dwelling or rooming unit for roominghouses and shelters.
- Plan review percentages, technology fees and state surcharges — none exist on the schedule, and Wisconsin levies nothing of its own on a local permit.
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
City of Green Bay Fee Schedule (PDF) — Chapter 8, Buildings and construction
Read 2026-09-25 as a 309,782-byte PDF with three columns — "Code Section", "Description", "2026 Fee" — and ordinance sections keyed in the margin (8-47 plan approval, 8-360 building and plumbing permits, 8-369 private wells, 8-449 electrical reinspections, 8-451 electrical permits, 8-478 mechanical permits). Extracted three ways: -layout mispairs columns exactly as Boston's sheet did (water heater handed the lawn sprinkler amount, the commercial section offset by a row), -raw scrambles the same tail, and -table pairs every row cleanly — that transcription is the one this site uses. The fee column is headed "2026 Fee"; the permit-guides page dates it to January 1, 2026.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Commercial Permits — who may apply, and the SPS 382.21 witnessing rule
Read 2026-09-25: building permits may be taken by contractor, tenant or owner; electrical work requires a State-licensed firm; and "In the past, the City of Green Bay had required HVAC contractors to obtain licensing through the City, but that requirement is no longer in effect" — state licence only. The page's "PLUMBING INSPECTION UPDATE EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 1, 2021" dates the SPS 382.21 test-and-witness procedure for sanitary sewers and interior DWV, a procedure rather than a fee.
- Permit portalCityPrimary source
Licensed Contractor Electrical Permit Application (PDF) — occupancy boxes and the generator fee
Read 2026-09-25 as a 1,014,525-byte PDF. Two facts come from this form and nowhere else: the occupancy boxes — "Single-Family / Two-Family / Multi-Family / Commercial / Educational / Manufacturing / Other" plus "Number of Units" — which are what make the schedule's three property classes a reader's choice, and the generator fee — "JOB DESCRIPTION: *$150 permit fee", asterisked against the "Generator *see below" checkbox — the only generator price the City publishes. The form also carries the "Value of work" field the commercial cost ladder reads, and the contractor statement requiring State electrical contractor and master certifications.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Permit Guides, Forms & Fees — the page that dates the schedule
Read 2026-09-25 for the effective date — "Permit fees listed in the guides go into effect January 1, 2026" — and for the fee schedule link under "Fees and Payments", which is how the schedule was tied to this division. The page also carries the permit guides (deck, garage, new home UDC, raze, tent, generator), the homeowner and contractor application PDFs for each trade, and the note that permit processing takes about a week once a complete application is received.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Permitting Process — the penalty, the two application forms, and the queue
Read 2026-09-25 for the penalty — "Failure to obtain a building permit may result in the doubling of permit fees, a municipal citation of over $500, and the work ordered redone or removed if in non-compliance" — and for the application structure: a short form for driveway expansions, yard sheds, fences and patios, a long form for everything else, all commercial projects on the long form, all trades' permits submitted with the building permit application, estimated project cost and all contractors' state credential numbers required, and a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Landmarks Commission for listed historic properties.
- City websiteCityPrimary source
Residential Permits — contractor rules trade by trade
Read 2026-09-25 for the owner-occupant rules the schedule does not carry: the owner of an existing single-family dwelling where they reside may pull each trade's permit for that dwelling; rental work is licensed-contractor-only; a contractor needs the State's Dwelling Contractor Certification and Qualifier Certification, which the City must verify before issuing; electrical services and all other wiring must be done by a Green Bay-licensed electrical contractor; a DIY electrician must meet an inspector with a floor plan and answer basic wiring questions; plumbing contractors must be Wisconsin master plumbers; and water heater replacement is named on the plumbing page as permitted work.