North Bay sets building permit record
The City of North Bay is already celebrating its best-ever construction year.
The city announced on November 24 that building permit values through the end of October have already exceeded $105 million.
That figure is comfortably ahead of the city’s previous record of approximately $101 million that was set in 2006. This year’s total to date is also significantly better than 2020’s total of $57.5 million and the $93.3 million recorded in 2019.
“We have never seen more construction activity in the City of North Bay,” said Mayor Al McDonald. “We are extremely pleased and very appreciative that families, businesses, and developers continue to recognize the potential of our city and are investing in our community.”
The city says the primary driver of this year’s record-setting numbers has been the residential sector. The total value of residential construction is now about $72.6 million—more than double the highest total of the past decade, set in 2011 at $35.7 million.
The sector’s year-to-date value represents a total of 236 new dwelling units, including 79 single-family dwellings, 137 multi-residential units, 10 semi-detached units, eight secondary units and two new duplexes.
McDonald credits the 2019 moratorium on residential development charges and the introduction of new economic development initiatives for putting the city in an ideal position to benefit from the housing boom created by the pandemic.
Meanwhile, commercial and industrial building permit values—at much more modest totals of $8.5 million and $15.8 million respectively— have also beat least year’s totals.
“Construction values are one of the benchmarks that we can use to help understand and assess economic growth, so we’re certainly encouraged by the level of residential development that we’re seeing,” said McDonald. “We’re optimistic that we will continue to see our numbers increase over the next two months and that we will finish the year in an even stronger position.”