By Stephanie Froese

Construction trend continues for 2011

May 11, 2011 | 6:24 AM

Prince Albert is on track to have another great year for Building Permits.

Kim Johnson, Chief Building Official with the City said with people building new, adding on, and upgrading 127 permits have been issued for the end of May. That’s 25 more than this time in 2010, which was also a year of record growth in terms of permits issued.

“We’re pretty much up right across the board. Were pretty much moving along at the same rate of speed as I would say 2010 was,” Johnson said.

To date there have been 86 residential permits issued as opposed to 77 in 2010. Commercial permits increased to 41 as opposed to 26 last year.

Johnson attributed the growth to Saskatchewan becoming a “have province.”

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“One of the reasons to my mind anyways is our natural resource base has been virtually untapped … most places are seeing growth from the smallest communities all the way up to the biggest cities.”

The upswing trend of building permits started in 2006. Besides a slight drop with the closing of the Prince Albert Pulp Mill, the numbers have been growing every year.

With the mill now slated to reopen as early as 2012, Johnson said he expects the positive trend for construction permits to continue.

“The pulp mill and anything else going — every time there’s new business and things starting up or whatever. People have to come in and fill those jobs and then everybody gets the run-offs from them as well.”

Johnson said there hasn’t really been any one type of purchaser standing out when it comes to commercial licenses.

“We’re seeing a pretty general increase across the board. If anything at all the mini-mall, mini-bay, strip type of thing is probably something that’s becoming more common.”

The process has been moving along fairly quickly, Johnson said.

He added “The only thing would be is as long as it doesn’t rain for another six months.”

sfroese@panow.com