Calgary is a growing city, and if the number of building permit applications received during the first quarter of 2024 is an indication, it’s growing by leaps and bounds.

The City of Calgary released quarterly statistics on May 8 that showed a 34 per cent year-over-year increase in the number of permit applications received (5,384).

“With a record number of building permits received in the first quarter of 2024, we have stepped up support for our customers,” said Ulrik Seward, Chief Building Official for the City of Calgary, in a prepared media release.

“We did this by issuing 4,736 building permits in Q1 2024. This is the highest number of building permits the City issued in the first quarter of a year in the past 10 years.”

Of those, 3,889 were residential building permits, containing 2,425 for new residential out of a total of 4,689 residential units represented for all permits.

A total of 82 per cent of all building permits issued during Q1 were residential, representing more than $1.01 billion in estimated value versus an estimated $277 million for non-residential permits.

Bill Black, CEO of the Calgary Construction Association, said that the announcement by the City of Calgary was welcome news.

“There’s a lot of bad noise out there, so it’s nice to see these signs of growth and activity and our city continue to thrive in the built environment. It’s nice to celebrate a little bit of good news here,” he said.

He said that looking at the ratio of how many permits have been applied for versus how many have been issued was a healthy number for the construction industry.

“We’re often complaining about the city not processing permits fast enough, and not getting things moving and creating a roadblock, and to me, that’s a fairly healthy relationship between actual issued and submitted. It does indicate that the city continues to be flat out in that area,” Black said.

Signs of an improving economy in Calgary

Black said that two things are needed to maintain the health of the construction industry, and that is a backlog of work for firms that represents opportunity and then projects for crews to move on to once one is completed.

"It creates a stability for the business owners, that allows them to take a longer-term view and not be hanging on by their fingernails, trying to live day to day," Black said.

Black said that the completion of two major projects in Calgary, the BMO Centre and the Calgary Cancer Centre, meant that construction workers would be freed up to work on other projects in the city.

"The labour issue is a concern, and it will be a concern for years to come from a commercial perspective, but the fact that large complex projects like the Cancer Centre and BMO Centre have wrapped up, that has released a significant amount of labour that was tied up on these very demanding sites," he said.

"So, for the time being, that has at least put some feet back in the market, so to speak. But that may be a short-lived reality. We have our Event Center starting, and we've seen the plans for Arts Commons – that's a little bit of a ways off."

He said that overall, large anchor projects that last between three to five years create health conditions for other parts of the industry—like what is currently being seen in terms of applications for building permits.

"These are very healthy because it creates a long runway for a decent portion of the industry, then the perfect balance is along with that... you get more mid-sized," he said.

"Now what you're seeing is the diversity of the industry is being accommodated with a diversity of projects. There are some contractors that couldn't do couldn't work on BMO or just not of the scale, but they could work on a Mahogany car wash."

The Mahogany Storage and Carwash, a three-storey car wash and self-storage facility in Mahogany, valued at $16 million was one of the projects listed by the City of Calgary among the top 10 completed projects during Q1.

Overall, the construction industry has served as a lagging indicator of the economy in Calgary, though the number of permits was a sign of an improving economy, Black said.

"When you see construction activity pick up, that is generally accompanied by a better and more vibrant economy," he said.