Brockton’s building boom from 2010 continued through 2011 with a switch to residential projects.
Chief Building Official Terry Tuck presented his semi-annual report to council last week showing residential building permits were up more than $2 million last year from 2010. Permits for single family residential were valued at $6,034,600, up from the $3,964,400 seen in 2010.
Tuck told The WHT the permits were for 22 new family homes and he’s hoping more will come through in 2012.
Another area showing a huge increase in permits was agriculture with $4.8 million in 2011 compared to $2.5M in 2010.
The commercial sector showed a healthy increase in construction, thanks to the new Best Western Hotel that’s currently being built in East Ridge Business Park. That along with a few other projects resulted in $4.8M in commercial building permits last year compared to just $405,000 in 2010.
Overall the totals are down substantially with $19.8M in permits last year compared to the $35.1M seen in 2010. However, Tuck is quick to point out that two major projects – the new high school and the new OPP headquarters – represented $23M of that total in 2010.
“It wasn’t a bad year overall really,” Tuck said. “We started off very slow, but once June kicked in things really picked up.”
Mayor David Inglis agreed and was especially pleased to see the increase in residential permits.
“A lot of these are for the apartments going up for seniors mostly. There’s a need for that here,” he said.
The mayor said that even renovation projects and smaller builds help. “It all adds up,” he said.
While Inglis said he wasn’t aware of any other “big builds” on the horizon, he’s hoping the boom will continue. “There’s a good trend right now, I hope it will continue,” he said.