Last year brought high traffic in the town’s building department as the number and value of building permits increased.
A tower crane at the edge of Collingwood’s downtown district currently works at the site of the largest project, in height and dollar value, to receive a building permit in 2019: Monaco.
Monaco Development, a six-storey mixed use building with retail on the main floor and five floors of condominiums, broke ground this year and kept on digging. The building is on the site of the former Admiral school and includes underground parking, which meant crews spent a good portion of autumn 2019 digging a big hole. Monaco officials predict it will take 1.5 to two years to complete the building.
According to the third-quarter building permit activity report the value of the Monaco development is around $84 million, which is 6.5 times the value of the second largest permit issued in 2019, which went to Living Waters Resort for the phase four hotel addition. The project value for the addition is listed in the range of $13.6 million.
Parkbridge also broke ground this year on a new head office facility, a two-storey building going up at 70 Huron Street. This project is estimated at $11.5 million, and Parkbridge hopes to occupy the building by early 2021.
Hume Street is getting two large projects with a four-storey Holiday Inn Express under construction (valued at $10.4 million) and a three-storey office building by Dunncap (valued at $4.4 million). Those are going up at 500 and 502 Hume Street, where extensive ground and site work has been completed and the shell of the four-storey building already stands.
Goldmanco Inc. received a permit for an 11,600 square foot commercial building at 175 First Street, which is valued at $3 million.
The Town of Collingwood is also building a sewage pumping station at 231 Balsam Street, which is valued at $3 million.
Sunbelt Rentals received a permit for a 12,000 square-foot industrial building at 3 Greco Court, which is valued at $2.9 million.
Though the fourth quarter of 2019 hasn’t been counted, the town website states there were 759 building permits issued in the first three quarters of 2019 (up to September 30). In 2018, there were 586 permits issued in the same amount of time.
The largest growth in 2019 was in single detached units with 161 permits issued for that type of construction and a total value of $67.7 million. In the first three quarters of 2018, there were 54 permits issued for the same type of units for a construction value of $15.4 million.
The second highest category was an apartment condo. The town issued 127 permits for that type of construction, which is exactly how many units are going into the Monaco development at Hume and Hurontario Streets.
By September 2019, the town had taken in $892,809 in building permit fee revenue and completed 4,985 inspections. The value of the permits for the first three quarters of 2019 was $286,273,096, which is an increase from $51,840,679 for the same time period in 2018.
For the full 2019 third-quarter building permit activity report by Greg Miller, chief building official, click here.
