Target Corp. won’t open its Red Deer store until spring, but the retail giant is already having an impact on the local economy.
The City of Red Deer issued a building permit last month for $7.1 million worth of renovations to the former Zellers premises in Bower Place Shopping Centre. PCL Construction has been preparing the site for Target since mid-November, when Zellers ceased operations there.
The Target approval accounted for more than a third of the $21 million in building permit values authorized by the city last month. It helped boost the commercial tally to $10 million, while residential permits came in at $7.5 million, industrial permits at $2.7 million and public project approvals at $790,000.
By comparison, the total value of construction approved by the city in the same month last year was $13.6 million. That was made up of $9.3 million in residential work, $2.7 million in the commercial category, $1 million for industrial work and $470,000 for public projects.
With one month remaining in 2012, Red Deer is on track for its highest building permit total since 2007. It’s already approved $256.8 million in construction, up from the $169.7 million for all of last year, $113.7 million for 2010 and $141 million for 2008.
In 2008 the city authorized $258.4 million in work, which marked a sharp drop from the pre-recession high of $421 million in 2007.
Residential construction during the first 11 months of 2012 has generated $65.7 million worth of permits, up from $71.3 million for the same period last year. Commercial approvals have accounted for $65.7 million in work, up from $53.5 million; industrial permits have jumped to $72.8 million from $15.3 million; and the value of work on public projects has dropped to $11.2 million from $20.2 million.