Wisconsin commercial construction projects, from the planning stage.
Projects often appear on a plan commission agenda months before a building permit. We list them from that point and add each public filing that follows.
Opens a sample of projects, no sign-in needed. Sign in with Microsoft or Google to see the rest. Accounts are free, with no payment or credit card required.
Filter to one county. Eau Claire is selected here on the map, which is shaded by the number of active projects.
Each project shows its value and the companies involved. A $23M rehabilitation hospital and an eighty-seven unit apartment complex.
More projects in the same county. A new hotel and a fifty-three unit apartment remodel.
Open a project to see its details. Dekker: a $23M, 43,197 sq ft, 36-bed rehabilitation hospital, its current stage, when we first saw it, and the three filings combined into it.
Land sale, stormwater notice and building permit, matched into one project. A $1.8M vacant-lot purchase, a construction stormwater permit, then the city building permit.
Inspections with dates, where the city publishes them. Slab in March, framing in April and May, rough-in and above-ceiling in June and July.
Which project is at which stage.
The same building appears in several public records, often under different names: a plan commission agenda, a land sale, a stormwater notice, a building permit, then inspections. We match those records into one project. The tracker is built from 19,551 documents.
- Filings matched into one projectThe agenda item, the land sale and the permit are matched into one record, with a date on each step.
- Sorted by stageSee which projects are proposals, which have a permit, and which are under construction.
- Names and addressesThe address, the owner or developer named in the filings, and a link to each source document.
Pick the kind of building you care about.
Explore sorts the board into lenses: apartments, schools, hospitals, warehouses and more. Open one and you get both halves at once, the projects being built and the records filed on them, narrowed to whichever county you choose.
Pick the kind of work you care about. Retail, industrial, schools, apartments, hotels, healthcare and more, each card showing how many projects and records sit behind it.
Open one and get everything on it. Schools here: the school projects being built, each on its lifecycle from site work to underway, with the records filed on them underneath. Narrow it to one county from the picker.
Prefer a report you can read and pass around? New building activity, planning items by type and profiles of each sector come as PDF construction reports.
Or browse without signing in: construction projects by county, city and sector, and public construction bids.
Land sales, site permits and public funding.
The Activity tab holds the records that never become a building on their own: commercial land sales, construction stormwater notices, environmental cleanups, school referendums and housing tax credits. Search any of it by name, address or city.
Search the records around a project. Land sales, site permits and stormwater notices in one table, narrowed by county or sector.
Follow the public money. School referendums and housing tax credits, often decided well before construction starts.
Taken from agency records.
Each record comes from the public posting of the agency that issued it, and each project links back to that agency's page.
We add new sources regularly.
Plan commission and council minutes, city permit books, state permit records, stormwater notices and land sales
Plan commission & council minutes
The earliest public notice a project exists: rezones, conditional use permits, site plans and plats, read in cities, villages and county boards across the state.
State commercial building permits
The state's own record of commercial plan reviews and permits, which reaches towns whether or not they publish anything themselves.
City building departments
The permit books themselves, with valuations, contractors and inspection history: read directly where a city publishes them, requested under the records law where it does not.
Stormwater notices
Filed by the owner before work disturbs an acre or more of ground, usually before anything is built.
Commercial land sales
Parcels changing hands, from the state's own transfer records, which is often the first sign a site is going to become something.
Public money
Economic development grants, housing tax credits, tax incremental districts, bond issues and school referendums.
A national database treats Wisconsin like a rounding error.
The big construction-data companies cover fifty states, which sounds like more until you notice their coverage stops at the metro line: Milwaukee and Madison get read, and the rest of the state shows up late, thin, or not at all.
We only do one state. That's the whole point. We can afford to read the Door County highway committee agenda, the City of Marshfield's plan commission minutes, and the village bid page that posts four times a year, because we're not trying to do the same thing in forty-nine other places.
Built and run by one person. That person is a Wisconsin native, born and raised in Marshfield, with a Bachelor's in Computer Science and an MBA from UW–Eau Claire and a Master's in Data Analytics from Penn State. If something is wrong, your email goes to the person who built it.
The short answers.
What counts as a project here?
Commercial construction in Wisconsin that has left a public record: an item on a plan commission or council agenda, a state commercial building permit, a municipal permit, a land sale, a stormwater notice, an inspection. Housing, retail, industrial, healthcare, schools, municipal buildings.
How early do you see a project?
Usually the first time it appears on a plan commission or council agenda, which is typically months before a building permit. Agendas show projects before they are approved; permits come after.
How do you know several filings are one project?
The same building often appears in public records under different names. We match the agenda item, the land sale, the stormwater notice, the permit and the inspections into one record, with a date on each step. When a match is uncertain, we keep the records separate.
How current is it?
Records are added as agencies publish them. Records that come from open records requests arrive more slowly, and the project page says when a source is one of these.
Is it really free?
Yes. The records are public. We sell the assembled data as licensed files to organizations that want the whole state. A bid board for people pricing public work is a separate product.
Accounts are free, with no payment or credit card required, and you can view the tracker before you sign in. A free account can open at least 50 projects a day, and the count resets daily. If you need more, contact us.
Where does it come from, and what do you do with my data?
Everything here is a public record, taken from the government body that issued it, or obtained from that body under Wisconsin's public records law. We never log into or scrape private platforms. Every project links back to the agency's own page, because their copy is the authoritative one.
Your side: we hold your email, whatever company and trade you choose to tell us, and which counties you watch. We do not sell it and we do not share it. See the privacy policy, which is short.
Who's behind it?
It is built and run by a Wisconsin native, born and raised in Marshfield, with a Bachelor's in Computer Science and an MBA from UW–Eau Claire and a Master's in Data Analytics from Penn State. It covers Wisconsin only, because Wisconsin is home and covering one state lets it go further in depth. When you write in, your email goes to the person who built it.