Rising construction activity.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Though current construction activity may never match the booming levels of a decade ago, the Sudbury building scene has rebounded nicely from a mid-90s slump with a slate of active and pending projects on the books, says the executive director of the Sudbury Construction Association.

With a $132-million expansion underway at Sudbury Regional Hospital's Laurentian site, a $25-million Superbuild project ongoing at Cambrian College and the possibility of more big box retail work in the near future, Ron Martin is optimistic that 2001 holds much promise for his 190 members.

"I'm hearing that the upcoming year is going to be pretty good," Martin says. "There's anticipation that the Falconbridge strike will end and that will significantly add a lot of maintenance work since there's probably some built-up demand there."

And there's hope on the horizon that provincial heritage funding will come through this year to finance Science North's Dynamic Earth project, a $12.8-million regional attraction celebrating Sudbury's mining heritage. The city has identified more than $80 million in accompanying private investment for retail and commercial development which could potentially create up to 700 person-year construction jobs.

According to City of Greater Sudbury building figures, the total value of construction in 2000 dipped slightly to $101, 407,500 from $118,452,700 the previous year.

Institutional spending led the way taking up the biggest chunk at $32.5 million, much of that devoted to hospital work. Commercial activity, which represented a $42.4 million splurge in 1999, thanks to the arrival of new malls and big box retail construction on the Kingsway, dropped to $17.1 million in 2000.

"That was a good flurry. We needed the boost because activity had been really slow for a while," says Martin.

Much of the general contract work both at the hospital and in the big box projects went to out-of-town firms, but Sudbury...