Kimberley is reporting a significant jump in growth in 2019, boasting just over $32 million across 241 building permits for the entire year with some of that momentum spilling into 2020.
Among the construction, the City said it saw the addition of 83 new dwellings as the population grew past 8,000 people.
The City of Kimberley saw development across multiple sectors, contributing to the landmark growth.
“The really exciting part about the year is that it wasn’t one or two big projects that ended up contributing to the $32 million. It was widespread construction cut across all different types of buildings, whether it was residential, single-family, multi-family, commercial and light industrial. It was a really broad-based construction and it was solid throughout the entire year,” said Mayor Don McCormick. “We saw just under 90 new dwellings created for the year. Which is pretty awesome because, at a couple of people per dwelling, that means that the building is keeping up with the number of new residents we have coming into Kimberley.”
Mayor McCormick said the level of growth Kimberley saw in 2019 had not been seen since the construction of its Alpine Resort 12 to 13 years ago.
Even with all of the construction, the City managed to handle all of the permits with a limited staff.
“241 building permits in terms of totals for the year is a huge number, and we have not added staff in our planning or inspections department in forever,” McCormick said to MyEastKootenayNow.com. “We’ve only got three people, one building inspector and two planners that are processing all those 241 building permits and all the associated work that goes along with that. They’ve done an amazing job this year.”
McCormick added that while this significant amount of growth was a pleasant surprise, that Kimberley was not caught unprepared.
“From the conversations that we had here in the City with various builders and developers, we knew there was a lot of interest,” said McCormick. “It’s very difficult to gauge how much interest is going to translate into action, and in 2019 it translated into action.”
McCormick added that 2019 started off strong, and kept the momentum going throughout the year with some growing over into 2020. The next step for the City is to find a steady rate it can realistically keep growing.
“The challenge we have is to try to figure out what level of both permitting and values are sustainable. Given that $32 million was the highest in about 12 or 13 years, it’s unrealistic to think that $32 million is going to happen every year. We’ve got enough momentum and enough investment going on the community that it is likely to be north of the $15 million we did for the last couple of years,” said McCormick. “The question is what is that number and how do we resource making that sustainable over a long period of time.”