Building permit numbers as of July 21 in Westlock County are down from the same time last year, but they are still ahead of the number of permits issued prior to 2007.
To date, the county has issued 90 building permits, down from the 120 that had been issued during the same time period in 2010, said county planning and development services manager Laurie Strutt.
Still, those numbers are considerably higher than the numbers the county was seeing prior to the boom in 2007.
“Before 2007, this would be a high number for us,” she said, adding that in 2007, 2008 and 2009 the number of permits issued topped 200 for the entire year.
“Those three years the numbers were crazy,” she said.
Although the number of permits issued has been consistently high for the past few years, Strutt said she can start to see the demand for permits returning to its pre-2007 level.
“This year is the first year that I’ve started to really say ‘OK, we’re starting to slow down just a bit,’” she said.
Nonetheless, Strutt said she has heard that another boom could be coming, which would either maintain or increase the surge in building permits from the past few years.
In fact, she said if the new Redwater upgrader gets up and running, it could spur increased development in the southwest section of the county.
As for a definitive reason why there have only been 90 permits issued so far, compared to the 120 at this time last year, she said it’s probably just because things have slowed down a bit, and is not necessarily indicative of a bigger reason.
Furthermore, development applications do not come into the county in a steady stream, so it’s not possible to predict how many permits will be issued by the end of the year, she said.
In order to build anything in the county, be it a manufactured home, a house, an addition or any one of a number of structures, the property owner must first submit a development application. If it’s approved, the owner will be issued a building permit, and he or she will have one year to begin construction.
However, Strutt said construction doesn’t always start immediately after approval has been given. In some cases the owner will have trouble lining up a contractor, or will discover the cost of construction is higher than expected, and will hold off until conditions become more favourable.
In town, the number of building permits for new builds in 2011 has remained at the same level it was in 2010, according to assistant development officer Marilynn Clayton.
So far this year, the number of permits issued is seven, which is equal to the number issued in 2010, but down from the 11 handed out in 2009.
However, the makeup of those permits shows a change in the types of projects being worked on in Westlock.
There have been three residential builds approved, with a total value of $1.3 million. This is a drop of three builds and $500,000 in value from the 2010 numbers. However, the average value of those three builds is $433,000, up from the average of $300,000 for the 2010 builds.
However, in terms of commercial builds, the town has seen a doubling in the number of new builds, from only one in 2010 to two this year. The projected value of those two builds is $1.4 million.
For industrial and institutional builds, there is one of each project currently approved. The value of the industrial project is $650,000, while the institutional project, the Pembina Lodge expansion, is valued at $12 million.
