Housing sector booming.

• Author: Wareing, Andrew
• Position: Timiskaming & region: special report

Bayport Village, a 25-unit townhouse complex in Haileybury under development by Alterra, is well on its way to completion of its first phase, says Dave Treen, Town of Haileybury director of community and developmental services.

Bayport Village is named after the fictitious town written about in the Leslie McFarlane Hardy Boys novels. The author is being commemorated by the naming of a new street in the subdivision in his honour.

The company had 18 units sold by mid-July.

"Infrastructure work is underway," he says. "They are developing all new water, sewer and storm water management, hydro, gas and telephone service. They're doing pre-grading and under-footing, getting ready for foundation work."

Completion of landscaping and other final touches are expected by spring of 2004, with people starting to move into their new units by late fall.

"There are other phases to the development being planned for an adjacent 400 acre parcel of land south of the current development, but that's in the conceptual phase at this point," says Treen.

Also on the homebuilding front, Town of New Liskeard chief planning official Bill Glassford says town staff is preparing an official plan amendment (OPA) for a residential development by local company Pedersen Construction.

The plan calls for the development of 27 units on Cosman Crescent. The amendment will change the zoning of a nearly five-acre plot of land from open space to residential.

"We're calling it an extension of the crescent because the crescent is already there and this will just allow the development to be completed," says Glassford. "It's got quite a ways to go to completion so it will probably be until next year before we see this come to fruition."

Englehart deputy clerk-treasurer Jana Butt says the town is currently working on an $875,000-improvement to its water treatment and...