Debate continues over the massive Erlton condo blaze, but don’t expect any radical reaction from builders or city hall.
Calgary developer The Apex Corporation has already taken steps to make construction sites safer, says company condo specialist Bill Lefevre.
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| Mike Sturk, Business Edge |
| Colin Darrow, president of developer Denver Carrington, says construction methods must change. |
“There isn’t going to be any knee-jerk reaction,” says Lefevre, who chairs the multi-family council of the Calgary Region Home Builders Association.
He noted there has been no softening of the condo sales market.
Garth Mann, president of Statesman Corp., says the 26-year-old company was working above and beyond the Alberta Building Code when its Erlton project caught fire.
Statesman will press for a toughening of rules to require three people with fire extinguishers to be present instead of two when decks are being waterproofed, says Mann, adding the company has already moved to the higher standard for its projects.
The public realizes that wooden dwellings themselves are not unsafe, and the Erlton fire hasn’t hurt condo sales, Mann says.
The danger is in the construction period, he says. It would not have mattered whether the building was framed in wood or light steel because steel framing is usually wood-clad.
But Colin Darrow, president of developer Denver Carrington, says we risk failing to learn the lessons of history if we don’t change our construction methods.
A wooden Quebec City burned 300 years ago and was rebuilt in stone. Chicago burned in the 1870s and San Francisco in 1906, and they were rebuilt in brick, he says.
Darrow says 4.5- and five-storey condos are mid-rise buildings and should be built in concrete and steel – what he calls “non-combustible construction.”
He claims condo sales have suffered since the fire - concrete and steel along with wood.
Meanwhile, city official Gary Klassen says the city is working with all parties on rebuilding the area hit by the blaze.
Klassen, the general manager of development and building approvals, says any lessons that come out of Erlton will be forwarded to the province.
The provincial and national building codes are up for review this fall, he says.
Building permit values jumped 25 per cent in June from a year earlier, city hall reports.
Calgary issued permits worth $219.3 million, up from $176 million in June 2001. Residential permits were up 58 per cent from a year ago and single-family permits were up 16 per cent.
Non-residential permits were down 24 per cent from the same month a year earlier, at $54.1 million from $71.2 million.
Meanwhile, building permits across Canada were on a record run in May, Statistics Canada reports.
Permits reached $3.6 billion nationwide, down from April but above $3.5 billion for the fifth month in a row. It’s an unprecedented streak, says the national statistics agency.
Calgary and Edmonton had the largest dollar advances in building permits for the first five months of the year,
powered by single-family construction. Twenty-two of 28 metropolitan areas had year-to-year increases, Statistics Canada says.
Municipalities issued $18.7 billion in permits from January to May, up 13.6 per cent from the first five months of 2001.
Statistics Canada also reports that non-residential construction investment dropped slightly in the second quarter as governments spent slightly more but businesses spent less.
Spending totalled almost $6.3 billion, down 1.7 per cent from the first quarter, says the agency.
Business spending dropped for the third quarter in a row, falling 4.6 per cent to $4.5 billion while industrial projects declined 6.5 per cent to $1.2 billion and commercial projects fell four per cent to $3.3 billion.
Statistics Canada notes that these data are seasonally
adjusted and exclude engineering construction.
Proprietary Industries Inc. has made the last instalment for a half interest in Eau Claire Market.
It said it plans to pay $5 million between August and November for the other 50 per cent.
Proprietary moved its head office to the second floor of Eau Claire at the end of June.
Proprietary owns and manages a portfolio of financial, resource and real estate interests.
