CBS makes big rebound in building starts after Covid

By Craig Westcott\April 14, 2023

CBS is continuing to buck the trend of less new home construction in the province, something that was evident at the Town’s annual Builders Forum held at the end of last month.

“We had almost 50 (people) in attendance from the building and development community,” Deputy Mayor Andrea Gosse noted last week at the public council meeting.

The forum is put together by the Town’s planning and development staff every spring and gives developers a chance to discuss and review CBS’s building standards and policies, and to take in seminars and presentations by invited experts.

This year’s forum included several presentations on energy efficiency and the various incentives and rebates available for energy efficient homes.

“I think everybody was really impressed with the whole morning,” said Gosse. “And I wanted to thank councillor (Rex) Hillier, our chair of planning and development, who closed out the morning and the whole team that brought the event together. It was quite a success.”

Hillier thanked Gosse for her remarks and the summary she offered of the various presentations. 

“It is an annual event, and it gears us up for moving into the building season,” he said. “There were some statistics that came out of that meeting, based on what we’ve been doing here over the last 12 months. We had 131 housing starts in 2022… That’s the most housing starts we’ve had since 2017. So, we’re really pleased with that. We had $4 million worth of repairs and renovations. That’s people building sheds, decks and fences. So, when you tack a mil rate onto that, you’re coming out with significant taxation. Our staff dealt with over 2,000 new files in 2022. They ranged in everything from a new fence to a new subdivision. That works out to about six new files a day. Some of those are done very quickly, others are much more complicated and take some time to work through the system. So, we’re really pleased with the work that we’ve done. We’re looking forward to the 2023 season. We’re excited about some of the projects that we know are in the hopper right now and that we’re trying to move forward over the coming months.”