East Garfield Park pulled 19 new-construction permits in the 90 days ending September 21, 2026 (June 24 through Sept 21). That's more than triple the 6 filed in the same window of 2025, and it makes this West Side neighborhood the No. 4 community area in Chicago for ground-up building permits, behind only Lake View, North Center, and West Town.
Key stats — 90 days ending Sept 21, 2026:
- 19 new-construction permits in East Garfield Park worth $37,560,047, vs 6 permits and $4,835,000 in June 24–Sept 21, 2025
- New construction was 28% of all 68 East Garfield Park permits, vs 3.9% citywide (338 of 8,669)
- One permit, a $28.8M five-story mixed-use building at 136 N Kedzie Ave, accounts for 77% of the neighborhood's new-construction dollars
- 12 new business licenses in East Garfield Park over the same 90 days, and none of them at an address with a building permit in the past year
Where Is New Construction Happening on Chicago's West Side?
BizPulse's permit tracking puts East Garfield Park's $37.6M in new-construction value ahead of Lake View's $36.2M for the 90 days ending Sept 21, 2026, even though Lake View filed 27 permits to East Garfield Park's 19. The prior 90 days (March 26–June 23, 2026) brought 16 new-construction permits worth $10.3M, so the count has been climbing for two quarters and the dollars jumped with one big project.
That project is 136 N Kedzie Ave, issued Sept 16, 2026: a five-story building with ground-floor commercial and office space, 51 affordable dwelling units, 12 indoor parking spaces, and green roofs. Take it out and the other 18 permits total about $8.8M, mostly three-flats and two-flats in the $400,000–$800,000 range.
The residential pipeline is tightly clustered. BizPulse data shows new three-unit buildings permitted at 3009, 3011, and 3015 W Lexington St, at 2902, 2908, 3041, and 3119 W Flournoy St, and at 3330 and 3332 W Walnut St, plus two-flats at 2754 and 2758 W Maypole Ave. Read the permit descriptions line by line and the 19 permits add up to at least 97 new dwelling units. The one non-residential ground-up job is a new gas station at 507 S California Ave (issued July 30, 2026, $700,000).
Two builders show up repeatedly. CLD Construction Inc is listed on 6 of the 19 new-construction permits, and Switch Electric, Inc on 4. On top of that, three renovation permits (2816 W Wilcox St, 2737 W Congress Pkwy, 3409 W Fulton Blvd) legalize or add basement units in existing two-flats.
The whole 90-day mix: 33 express permits, 12 renovations, 19 new construction, and zero sign or demolition permits. This is a housing build-out, not a storefront one.
What This Means for B2B Sellers
It's two different buyer lists, and they don't overlap.
Jobsite buyers, now. Nineteen active ground-up sites inside one neighborhood is a route, not a list. Temporary fencing, portable sanitation, dumpsters and debris hauling, temp power, framing lumber, windows, porches, HVAC, and builder's-risk insurance all sell into this pipeline over the next 12–18 months. With one builder on six of the permits, a single conversation can reach several sites at once.
Occupancy buyers, later. Roughly 97 new units means landlords who'll need property management, turnover cleaning, pest control, waste service, security systems, and landlord insurance once certificates of occupancy land. The 51-unit Kedzie building also adds ground-floor commercial space. That's a future tenant buildout for signage, POS, and fit-out vendors, though no tenant has shown up in the license data yet.
The storefront side is quiet for now. According to BizPulse's license database, East Garfield Park recorded 12 new licenses in the 90 days ending Sept 21, 2026 (up from 9 a year earlier). Five of them were food trucks or special-event food vendors at 135 N Kedzie Ave, and none sits at an address with a building permit since September 2025. In East Garfield Park, the rooftops are arriving before the retail. The same pattern showed up citywide in our September new construction breakdown, where none of 118 ground-up addresses had a recent license. For the neighborhood next door, see our Humboldt Park permit spotlight.
You can watch these sites move on BizPulse's construction hot blocks map or pull every permit on a block through BizPulse search. The raw filings come from the City of Chicago's Building Permits dataset.
Bottom line: East Garfield Park tripled its new-construction permits year over year, so sell to the jobsite today and to the landlords about a year from now.