With 135 home starts recorded in North Bay so far this year, Mayor Vic Fedeli is trumpeting his city as “leading the pack” in Ontario residential construction.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. released their third quarter residential starts for the first nine months of 2009. North Bay is up a whopping 95.7 per cent over the 69 units built during the same quarter in 2008.
“We see this positive growth continuing throughout 2010, as our diverse economy helps shield us from the brunt of this downturn faced by other communities,” said Fedeli in his weekly e-newsletter.
The city has enjoyed a spate of new commercial and institutional construction this year and with three months to go, Fedeli is forecasting that a new record for city building permits could be set. Last year, the City of North Bay issued permits for projects valued at $84.4 million.
Fedeli is also pleased that Moody's Investor Service scored the city very high again with an Aa1 credit rating. “To some, these may be boring statistics, but we saved hundreds of thousands of interest costs thanks to our ranking.”
The city's credit rating has been bumped five times since 2002 when it was Baa 1.
Moody's named North Bay's strengths as including its low debt and debt servicing costs, and increasing levels of reserves. The low debt burden helps support a high investment-grade rating.
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