Approvals for a pair of apartment buildings in Red Deer’s Vanier East neighbourhood helped boost the city’s March building permit values past the $22-million mark.
Permits were issued to Traine Construction Ltd. for a 72-unit apartment building and a 64-unit apartment building at 39 Van Slyke Way. These were valued at $9.1 million and $6.5 million respectively, with a permit for a related $71,000 amenities building also approved.
These permits accounted for three-quarters of the $21.3 million in residential work authorized by Red Deer’s Inspections and Licensing Department during March. Permits in the commercial category added $670,000 and industrial permits $70,000, for a total of $22 million for the month.
This tally was up sharply from March 2014, when the city issued building permits for $15.4 million in work. That figure included $10.2 million in the residential category, $1.5 million for commercial work, $3.6 million for industrial construction and renovations, and just over $100,000 for public projects.
As of the end of March this year, the city had approved $83.8 million worth of projects. That was more than double the $40 million figure for the January-to-March period last year.
Residential permits have contributed $32.9 million to the 2015 total, up from $29.7 million, while commercial values have increased to $3.5 million from $2.8 million, and the figure for industrial permits has climbed to $13.3 million from $7.2 million. The biggest change has come in the public category, where a $28-million permit for the Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre parkade in February and a $5.2-million permit in January for renovations to Annie L. Gaetz School helped push the three-month total to $34.2 million, as compared with $134,000 for the same period last year.
The Vanier East apartment buildings approved last month are among four apartment buildings at the site that received a green light from Red Deer’s municipal planning commission nearly a year ago. At that time, developer Highstreet Ventures Inc. of Kelowna indicated that the four structures would contain a total of 232 apartment units.