Single-family residential development was very strong in Niverville of the first six months of 2019, but multi-family residential development took a hit.

Niverville Mayor Myron Dyck says this is one of the strongest years for single-family development that they have had since 2015.

Mayor Myron Dyck"We are at 26 single-family for the first six months, whereas last year we did 36 total so I would say we are ahead of last year and will likely surpass it and it is probably better than each of the last four years where 38 was the high since 2015 for single family. We are likely to surpass that this year."

At the sixth month mark in 2018, there were 17 single-family housing starts. Meanwhile this year there have been no multi-family housing starts compared to 5 in the first six months of 2018 for a total of 52 housing units. Dyck says this is all part of the cycle of development.

"Right now there are a lot of things that are not yet public because they are things that are in process of admin review and so our CAO is working with admin developers on multi-family making sure all the ducks are in a row before they can come to council for review. While the first six months haven't shown anything, the next six months should show some additional work there."

Dyck says some developers are also waiting for a new force-main to be built before they pull building permits for some larger projects.

"Things like infrastructure, sewer, water, have to go in, we got new development going in so you can't really pull permits until you have the infrastructure in. What I attribute the lull in building permits now is the infrastructure needs to go in. You can't pull a permit to put a basement in until you know you have all of the utilities to hook up to."

Dyck says council has just awarded the contract for the force-main construction to Southwood Ventures for $2.75M and that cost will be shared between the town and two developers. He notes once the new force-main is in it should spark development on the west side of town.

The total value of building permits pulled in the first half of 2019 is $7.2M which is down from $9.1M over the same period last year.