In the new Portland Permit Review Dashboard, data is provided in three different formats:
- The Commercial & Residential Snapshot allows users to see data on applications and issuances for different types of commercial and residential permits, which can be broken down by work type (new construction, alterations, demolitions and so forth) and permit sub-types (such as apartments and condominiums, office buildings, single-family homes, and mercantile (retail space)). This dashboard includes average and median times taken to reach "approved to issue" status, at which point City development review teams finish their work and await payment of final permit fees by the customer. The dashboard also features the total valuation of the types of issued permits that are selected. The customer can also select a period of time, going back to January 2020, for which to evaluate permit data.
- The Commercial & Residential Historical Data illustrate information reported by year since 2020 on the numbers of commercial and residential permit applications received and issued, their valuations and the average and median times to reach "approved to issue" status.
- The Commercial & Residential Review Snapshot shows the median and average numbers of business days taken by City staff and applicants, for each type of review, for all types of commercial and residential building permits.
The data is updated every Monday morning.
“Permitting is a partnership between the City and the customer, and we are committed to strengthening that partnership,” said David Kuhnhausen, interim director of Portland Permitting & Development (PP&D). “Since launching our real-time permit dashboards in 2022, we worked with our customers to refine and improve this critical tool. With the updates we are announcing today, we can provide greater transparency into the review stage of the permitting process.”
Information provided in these dashboards will serve as one tool for City leaders to identify potential areas for improvement in the review of development permits and understand what contributes to the successes of teams that are completing their reviews in a timely manner.
In 2021, then-Commissioners Dan Ryan and Mingus Mapps created the Permit Improvement Task Force that set ambitious goals to reduce the times for permits to achieve "approved to issue" status (the point at which City review teams complete their work and await payment of final permit fees) from the dates at which the customers submit the information needed for a permit to be set up for initial review.
First introduced in 2022 and then updated in 2023, PP&D’s initial real-time permit dashboards provided weekly updates on the numbers of residential and commercial building permits in different phases of the review process over the previous 20 business days. The initial dashboards also illustrated the average number of days for each review phase. In addition, they provided year-by-year comparisons of the numbers of residential and commercial building permits that were set up.
Learn more about the updated Portland Permit Review Dashboard.