City hammers away at banner building year
By SHAWN BERRY
berry.shawn@dailygleaner.com
Published Tuesday October 16th, 2007
Appeared on page A1
Fredericton appears poised for another banner year in construction.
The city has seen $80.6 million in construction investment during the first nine months of 2007.
While the city won't shatter last year's whopping $132-million record, building is expected to surpass the $100-million mark for the second year in a row.
It's also on track to set a record for commercial construction.
The robust growth comes as no surprise to Marx Miles. He recently moved his business, Frank's Finer Diner, to Two Nations Crossing, almost doubling in size to 226 seats in the new location.
"I'm optimistic about the future here," Miles said Monday.
"What they're saying here is that this is going to be the north side's Prospect Street."
For Miles, who has owned the Fredericton restaurant for 24 years, the view outside looks promising.
Down the road the girders are in place for a new office complex and there's a buzz of activity across the street where crews are preparing the site for a new building supplies store.
It's the kind of retail activity that Coun. Mike O'Brien points to as giving Fredericton's economy a real slingshot effect: new businesses open up, more people move in and they need homes.
"The last three or four years in Fredericton have been a wondrous time," O'Brien said Monday.
"It shows that there's extreme confidence in the city from both the residents -- with the renovations they're making to their properties, their expansions or their decision to build a new home -- and the business community and through to the developers because they continue to build apartments, condominiums and homes to service the market that's here."
The city has seen $16 million in new commercial building. That's up from $9 million last year.
And upgrades to existing commercial buildings have topped $11 million, up from $6 million in 2006.
"Fredericton is the shopping destination centre for central New Brunswick and the Upper River Valley area," O'Brien said.
There's strong development in the residential sector too.
Construction of single-unit residences has accounted for $21 million so far this year. That's up from $16 million.
O'Brien is confident the overall $100-million threshold will be passed by year's end.
Commercial development continues along Two Nations Crossing, Cliffe Street and Bishop Drive.
The same will happen on the south side once work begins on a new sport and leisure centre there, he said.
Shovels are also in the ground at UNB's Corbett Brook Centre development on the south side, he said.
The growth taking place in Fredericton mirrors what's going on in a lot of mid-sized Canadian communities, says UNB economist David Murrell.
Fredericton, like Moncton and Saint John, is on the receiving end of the exodus from rural New Brunswick. And retailers are increasingly deciding to base large stores in regional service centres.
"That's happening all over Canada. You're getting medium-sized cities growing quite rapidly and you have rural communities losing their businesses," Murrell said.
That's mostly because of the opening of big-box stores in the larger communities that have the critical mass to support such businesses.
"Fredericton is emerging as a retail centre for western New Brunswick," he said.
Fredericton Chamber of Commerce general manager Anthony Knight said the local economy's growth in recent years has been "outstanding."
"It certainly says Fredericton is open for business and there are development opportunities in the city that anyone can take advantage of," he said.