The city of Kamloops issued just over $10.4 million in construction permits issued last month, putting it on par with the same month last year, when $10.3 million in permits were issued.
Speaking on NL Newsday, Building and Engineering Development Manager Jason Dixon says it was a pretty average month for permits in February.
“We’ve over time got to see that January and February aren’t always the most exciting months. Things are just getting going,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of activity in applications through the month of February. Spring is hopefully on its way, I think everybody is hoping for that. We’re likely to see some more activity going forward.”
Of the 84 total permits issued, 38 were for residential construction totalling $8,410,660 – eighty per cent of all permit values in February. Dixon says he expects more residential permits to come in the months ahead.
“I kind of expect to see strength in the residential side. We saw 12 permits in the multi family duplex category. Six were those were up at a multi family site in Juniper, and the another six in Batchelor,” he added. “It’s not uncommon to see groups of applications go through in multi-family developments like that, but its good to get those out there.”
Through two months of 2021, the city has issued $19.1-million in permits this year. It is down from the $29.7 million in permits at this time last year.
“You know we still have commercial applications coming in. We still have applications we’re working through, so its kind of depending on timing as to when those finally get approved and get picked up,” Dixon said. “We might see some bigger projects in March, but I think at this point, it looks like a lot of activity in the residential side is going to continue.”
Kamloops has seen four straight record years of construction between 2017 and 2020 with just under $1.2 billion in issued construction permits in that four year span. Last year’s record came in at just over $395 million, with the massive RIH Patient Care Tower project making up almost 40 per cent of that total.
