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Construction booms (for now) throughout the Vancouver region but will it last?

September 4th, 2012 · 6 Comments

The building industry and municipalities track building permits hawkishly. The cities need to know if they need more or fewer planners on the job, as well as belt-tightening all around if construction slows down. Builders want to know what everyone else is up to and whether there’s a glut of condos coming on.

Vancouver got the ball rolling for me on this topic recently by issuing a news release noting that the value of buildings for permits in the first half of 2012 were in the $1-billion plus range. (Original news release here.) That got me wondering what was going on with other municipalities. Were they seeing returns to pre-recession levels, still struggling or had they recovered even faster?

My story here has the results of my little research foray. For numbers junkies, here are the sites I went to: Richmond, which had fabulously complete stats, right down to individual addresses; Surrey, and Metro Vancouver. Vancouver’s new release is here and its historic stats (which you can’t find by going to the menu on the main website, oh, no, that would make it too easy) are here.

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  • Everyman

    Please somebody bring this boom to an end, before the city is overrun with bland 4 story boxes bearing coloured glass panels along the arterials and yet another glass clad tower on podium concoction near downtown. I was at the Ridge the other night and all I could think of was that this quirky neighbourhood treasure was going to be replaced by yet another dull , multi-unit, wood frame box with cookie cutter retail units below. Yawn.

  • Raingurl

    Ya, it royally sux being in the city these days. Everywhere you go there is scaffolding or dirty streets or mean flag girls ignoring us office girls. I thought the recession might give us a break but did you see what they’re doing next door to the Marine Building? Seriously, WTHeck! It was a courtyard just last year. I used to sit there on my lunch break. There was a super huge Rodo. Bet they threw it in the landfill to make way for an office tower.

  • Roger Kemble

    http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/canadian-housing-bubble-full-mania-canada-household-debt-surpasses-us-household-debt-canada-real-estate/

  • Nelson100

    This boom has resulted in some of the most appalling decisions ever made by our planning department. It has resulted in the most banal, appalling architectural this city has ever seen. We have lost heritage buildings, churches, Pantages and the Ridge to name a few. Our city council, (rather than acting as mature stewards of our city) have been reckless development cheerleaders, laying waste to any concept of community input. Have housing costs gone down? No. Is the city greener? No (there’s nothing green about a forest of glass towers). Is it a better place to live? No. Here’s one vote for putting an end to this real estate pyramid scheme now.
    One vote for letting the developers who have made billions move to Alberta. And one very big vote for immediate unemployment for the city council that presided over it all.

  • stuart

    And as a reminder – that construction is one of the top five most polluting human activites.

  • stuart

    Developers in the city have little desire for “design” … their reason to exist is too make money. That’s why Vancouver has the worst architectural design in Canada.