Wallace building permits

Tips & gotchas

• Wallace contracts building inspection, plan review, and Building Official services to the City of Kellogg's Building Department (currently Keith Teeters, (208) 786-9131), the same official who also serves the Shoshone County cities of Pinehurst, Smelterville, Wardner, and Osburn. Despite this shared administration, Wallace remains its own legal jurisdiction — its own adopted code chapter (Wallace City Code Title XV, Ch. 153), its own locally amended snow-load/frost-depth/foundation standards, its own Historic Preservation ordinance (Ch. 155), and its own fee-setting authority via City Council resolution. Do not assume Wallace's fees match Kellogg's, Shoshone County's, or any of the other shared-official cities without confirming directly.
• The entire City of Wallace is a National Historic Landmark district (the only U.S. city entirely so listed) — nearly all exterior construction work requires a Certificate of Appropriateness from the combined Planning & Zoning/Historic Preservation Commission BEFORE a building permit will be issued. This is a genuinely distinct, city-specific permit step, not a formality.
• Building permit fees are set by City Council resolution (Wallace City Code § 153.001(E)) but are not published on wallace.id.gov as a fee schedule; confirm current fees directly with City Hall, (208) 752-1147. This mirrors the same finding already documented for Kellogg, the neighboring city that supplies Wallace's contracted building official — neither city publishes a fee schedule online.
• Electrical, plumbing, and mechanical work is state-administered in Wallace via the Idaho Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses / Division of Building Safety (1-800-955-3044, dbs.idaho.gov), not issued or inspected by the city — consistent with the rest of Shoshone County and with Boise's DOPL-for-plumbing pattern only insofar as trades separate from the local building department; Wallace has no locally issued electrical/plumbing/mechanical permits at all.
• Wallace's local building code amendments require an 80 psf ground snow load, 60 psf minimum roof design snow load, and 30-inch minimum frost depth — noticeably stricter than lower-elevation Idaho cities, reflecting Wallace's location in the Bitterroot Mountains (Silver Valley).
• A Certificate of Occupancy is required, in addition to any building permit, for all structures or modifications that will be occupied, per the city's own Certificate of Appropriateness application conditions.
• Idaho state law generally exempts homeowners performing work on their own primary residence from contractor-registration requirements (Idaho Code § 54-5205); the general county-level permit package documents this exemption process, and it is expected to apply equally within Wallace, though confirm directly with the contracted Building Official for city-specific paperwork.
• Wallace has no distinct commercial building permit or commercial tenant-improvement permit. The City's Building Permit Process and Procedures handout (adopted 11/12/2025, published in the November 2025 Council Packet PDF) and Wallace City Code § 153.001 both describe one Building Permit process for the whole city, with commercial and non-residential construction reviewed under the 2018 IBC (§ 153.001(A)(1)) instead of the 2020 State Residential Code (§ 153.001(A)(2)) within that same process, rather than through a separate commercial application, fee schedule, or review track. The same holds for Kellogg, Idaho — the neighbouring city that supplies Wallace's contracted Building Official — whose single Building Department Permit Application likewise has no 'Commercial' or 'Tenant Improvement' checkbox. This is separate from the historic-preservation Certificate of Appropriateness requirement: a commercial project in the historic core needs BOTH the Certificate of Appropriateness (exterior and historic-character review) and this same Building Permit (code compliance and life-safety review) — see the historic-preservation-certificate-of-appropriateness permit type for this jurisdiction.