The first three months of 2021 have seen three times as many building permits with about double the value filed as there were in the first quarter of 2020, the City of Thompson says.
As of March 31, there had been 33 permits filed with the city’s inspections department with a total construction value of $3,647,802.42. In the first three months of 2020, 11 permits with a total construction value of $1,831,554 were filed.
All the permits filed so far are from the private sector, inlcuding one new business.
“Last year was a challenging year for business in our community,” said Mayor Colleen Smook in a press release. “But construction in Thompson continues to hold strong as our residents and entrepreneurs continue to find new opportunities in Thompson."
120 permits with a total construction value of $11,486,226 were field in Thompson in 2020. Forty-eight of them were for residential alterations, 25 for strucutre removal or demolition, 21 for commercial alterations and 16 for garage and carport cosntruction. The total number of permits last year was 50 per cent higher than the 80 filed in 2019 but the construction value was about the same. In 2018, 87 permits were filed with a total value of more than $18 million.
In a recent interview with the Thompson Citizen, Smook said business and construction are getting back up to speed after being slowed down or delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Ford had started before the pandemic working on building their new dealership,” she said. “That is still going forward. It did get slowed down over the last year but they’re back on track. The Dairy Queen should be up and running this summer. There’s a new dentist coming to town. [City manager] Anthony [McInnis] has had calls just this last week or two, people looking at land up here.”
Other projects remain dormant for the time being.
“There’s somebody looking at a bigger development so that’s basically gone by the wayside temporarily while everything gets put together because the government, with the COVID and that, there’s been higher priorities with the whole province than just some building permits and leases and that. We’re understanding of that and we’ve been working with them very closely to make sure that nothing gets forgot about.”
The city says it expect more commercial permits to be filed later this year connected to existing construction projects.
