The City of Airdrie's Economic Development department has just released it's 2018 Year in Review which says business and construction growth in the city was steady in the past year.  

Business licenses stayed consistent during the year with a small increase of 2.2 percent from 3,944 in 2017 to 4,018 in 2018. That included the opening of 73 new commercial / industrial and 325 home-based businesses in Airdrie which resulted in 366 new full and part-time jobs being created. 

Kent Rupert, Team Leader for Economic Development in the city has a simple reason for the continued growth of the commercial market in Airdrie.  The city itself just keeps on growing.

"Our population base still continues to grow just over five percent so I think people still see opportunities to move their business here, whether it's from an employment base or whether it's from a customer base.  We're still a city that's continuing to grow from that perspective."

In total, 304 commercial and industrial permits were issued in 2018 with a total value of $67 million.  That figure was more than double 2017's total of $28 million.  There was a significant number of large scale developments in Airdrie, including McDonald's in Cooper's Town Promenade, a 23 bay strip mall in Kingsview Business Park, the Airdrie Crossing development in Gateway and continued development in Sierra Springs.

While commercial growth remains steady, industrial projects in the city have flattened out over the past couple of years.  Rupert says though, that isn't unique to Airdrie.

"I think in Canada and Alberta, investment is down overall.  Whether that's because of governments or perceptions or that type of thing but it just seems that businesses are a little nervous that they don't know all the rules necessarily because we do have two new governments in the last couple of years, both at the provincial and federal level.  I think that investment is, overall, down right across Alberta."

The Airdrie housing market dropped considerably in 2018 from the previous year.   1,918 residential permits were issued in 2018, down from 2,379 the previous year.  The total value of residential construction was $162 million compared to $216 million in 2017.  Rupert says the fall could be mostly attributed to a drop in construction of multi-family units.

"There was no townhouses and no apartment buildings constructed in 2018 so that's where we've seen most of the drop.  Over the years we've seen the multi-family market increase and this year it dropped down a fair amount."

When he gazes into his Economic Development crystal ball for 2019, Rupert is predicting another tough year ahead, particularly the start of it.  "Certainly everything we read from economists, it's going to be a tough year.  Certainly the first two quarters.  We have a provincial election looming and a federal election coming down later in the year and that always slows things down but I do hope to see the third and fourth quarters of the  year start to pick up."

The Economic Development department conducted a Business Satisfaction Survey in 2018 which showed that 86 percent of business respondents say Airdrie is a good place to do business.  25 percent said they expect to hire or maintain staffing levels over the next year.  Rupert says both of those figures are encouraging and shows that there is still relatively good business confidence in the city. 

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