Planning department reports record residential permits and rising code-enforcement activity

Ben Bonhoeffer, presenting the planning department's report at the Jan. 27 Board of Works meeting, said the city issued 154 new single-family permits in 2024 and recorded substantial commercial and multifamily permitting tied to large developments.

"In 2024, we did a 154 new single family permits and that's a high point for us," Bonhoeffer said, and he noted the city issued 246 multifamily units tied to a single project identified in his remarks as the Belkanto development.

Bonhoeffer outlined commercial and industrial permitting activity, saying the city exceeded 1,000,000 square feet of commercial/industrial permits in the past year, driven in part by the Eli Lilly project on the city's west side. He said the Lilly Medicine Foundry project is expected to begin site work in late spring and move vertical by summer, describing it as a multi-building campus of roughly one million square feet.

On code enforcement, Bonhoeffer said staff recorded 2,007 unique enforcement activities in 2024 (emails, citations, follow-ups) and 877 new cases; the department's voluntary compliance rate was described as "95 to 98%". Bonhoeffer said staff planned to provide year-end totals and charts to council members upon request.

Bonhoeffer closed by noting that planning is still active in the winter months: the department completed 90 building inspections and issued 20 permits in the most recent period presented to the board, including seven new single-family homes.

The numbers suggest continued residential growth and increasing enforcement workload for the planning department; staff said they will provide more detailed year-end materials to the council on request.