Development has dropped substantially in Slave Lake during the first seven months of 2003, and part of the reason could be a shortage of serviced lots, admits the Town’s development officer.
The building permit summary to the end of August shows overall development dropped to $5.1 million from almost $7 million last year. The shortage of lots “definitely could be part of the reason ,” for the decline, said Laurie Skrynyk, “because our inventory is low on (serviced) residential, commercial and industrial lots.”
Construction could well take off once the first lot is developed on the south side of Hwy. 2, and while there’s plenty of interest in that property, no one has presented a development permit request.
“We’ve been talking to a lot of architects and engineers,” Skrynyk told The Leader last week. “People have been doing their homework, but there’s still nothing” in terms of development permit applications.
The report to the end of August shows there’ve been just 15 housing starts - worth $2.4 million — in the first eight months of 2003, compared to 22 starts - worth $3.6 million — in the same period last year.
Likewise, there’s been no institutional development starts this year, but $1.9 million in the first two thirds of last year, and $1 million industrial development last year as opposed to none this year.
The only area where development exceeds last year was that in commercial properties where there was $2.3 million worth of development this year as compared to just $480,000 plus change last year.

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