We pull the permits and coordinate the inspections. Here is what that involves in Inver Grove Heights.
Where the permit comes from
Inver Grove Heights' City Inspection Department, at 8150 Barbara Avenue. Permit questions go to 651-450-2550 or permits@ighmn.gov. City phone numbers change from time to time — if this one doesn't connect, ighmn.gov/1244/Building-Permits-Inspections has the current one.
How the process runs
Applications go through the city's CityView Portal, with plan review turnaround set by project type — 3 business days when no plan review is required, 15 business days for a residential project that needs one, 20 for commercial. Electrical is inspected by the State rather than the city, and it runs first in the sequence: electrical rough-in, then a combined framing, insulation, mechanical, and plumbing rough-in, then electrical final, then building, mechanical, and plumbing finals.
What basement remodeling specifically triggers
A finished Inver Grove Heights basement needs a ceiling height of at least 7 feet in habitable rooms, dropping to 6 feet 4 inches under beams, girders, ducts, and soffits — the same statewide minimum most metro cities apply. Egress windows need at least 5.7 square feet of net clear opening, a minimum 24-inch height and 20-inch width, and a sill no higher than 44 inches off the floor. If the project adds a bedroom and the home is one of the city's many still on a septic system — common in the older Rich Valley area — a compliance inspection from an MPCA-licensed septic inspector is required before the permit is finalized.
Building conditions in Inver Grove Heights
Inver Grove Heights sits directly above the Pine Bend Impact — a meteor strike the Minnesota Geological Survey identified in 2021, roughly 490 million years old and about 2.5 miles across, its crater buried under some 350 feet of rock and soil near the Mississippi River bluffs. Those bluffs mean shallower, more irregular bedrock along the city's eastern edge than the flatter former farmland to the west. A meaningful share of the city, Rich Valley especially, is still unsewered — homes run on individual septic systems, which the city's own permit process accounts for directly when a project adds a bedroom.