Institutional projects drive Cranbrook building permits to record $309.8 million
Institutional projects drive Cranbrook building permits to record $309.8 million
A rendering of the new Dr. F.W. Green Memorial Home in Cranbrook, the largest project contributing to the city’s record 2026 building-permit value.
Photo credit: Interior Health
CRANBROOK — Cranbrook has recorded $309.8 million in building permits so far in 2026, more than three times the city’s previous annual record, although nearly 70 per cent of this year’s construction value comes from institutional projects rather than housing.
As of Sept. 9, the city had issued 140 permits. Cranbrook’s final 2025 permit report put the previous annual record at $102.5 million, meaning this year’s total has already surpassed it by more than $207 million.
Institutional construction accounts for $215.3 million of the 2026 total. The city also reports $66.1 million in medium-density multifamily construction, $10.5 million in high-density multifamily construction, $7.1 million in single-family work, $5.4 million in industrial construction and $5.1 million in commercial work.
Those categories do not fully reconcile with the city’s headline figure. Together they total about $309.48 million, roughly $282,000 below the $309.76-million exact total shown elsewhere in the same report. No explanation for the difference is provided.
The largest contributor is the redevelopment of the Dr. F.W. Green Memorial Home, which Cranbrook identified earlier this year as the single biggest project behind its permit results. Interior Health currently lists the project budget at $232 million, while the Kootenay East Regional Hospital District has said it is contributing $92 million toward the development.
That overall project budget is separate from the value of permits issued during a particular year. Cranbrook recorded a $24.306-million Phase 1 foundation permit for F.W. Green in December 2025, while institutional permits issued in 2026 now total $215.3 million.
The replacement home will increase capacity from 60 to 150 beds. The first phase will create space for 66 beds and is expected to open in 2027, allowing residents of the existing home to move into the new building. A second phase will add another 84 beds and is scheduled for completion in 2030.
Another institutional project underway is Cranbrook’s new childcare centre near Western Financial Place. The roughly $13.5-million development is planned for 123 licensed spaces, including 48 for infants and toddlers and 75 for children aged three to five.
Housing accounts for a smaller share of the headline permit value, but the number of homes moving through construction is substantial. Cranbrook highlighted seven projects currently under construction that together account for 539 units, including 265 market-rental units in Crown Pacific’s Wildstone development, 102 KulKon townhomes at Wildstone and 71 apartments at WestUrban’s Hawthorne project.
The remaining projects on the city’s list are 49 senior rental units being developed by Colbrook Properties, 20 below-market homes through ʔAqantⱠanam Housing Society, 12 below-market senior units at Rotary Creekside Village and 20 Victory Arch units on 11th Street South.
Those 539 homes are different from the number of units permitted this year. Cranbrook’s report says building permits had been issued for 210 dwelling units in 2026 as of the third-quarter update, compared with 203 during all of 2025. Some of the larger developments now under construction entered the approval and permitting process in previous years.
The city’s report also uses two different measures for residential construction value that cannot be readily reconciled. Its development-type breakdown lists $66.1 million in medium-density multifamily work, $10.5 million in high-density multifamily construction and $7.1 million in single-family construction, a combined $83.7 million. A later table in the same report lists 2026 “residential construction value” at $52.94 million. The report does not explain the difference, so neither figure provides a clear measure of housing’s share of the $309.8-million total.
The current wave of construction follows several years in which Cranbrook identified a shortage of housing as a major planning issue. Its 2024 Housing Strategy estimated the city would require about 1,460 additional homes between 2021 and 2031 under the 0.85-per-cent annual population-growth assumption used in its official community plan. About 47 per cent of that estimated need reflected housing shortages that already existed, rather than future growth.
A second scenario using the higher BC Stats household-growth projection available at the time estimated that as many as 2,330 additional homes could be required by 2031.
Cranbrook has also changed its zoning in response to provincial small-scale multi-unit housing legislation, allowing as many as three or four homes on many lots where one or two had previously been permitted. The city says 120 single-family lots currently have preliminary layout approval or are under construction, with many seeing duplexes, fourplexes or other multi-unit forms.
City staff have pointed to earlier land-use approvals, infrastructure investment and revitalization tax incentives as factors supporting development, but the permit figures show that the immediate reason for the record dollar value is major institutional construction. Housing is more prominent when the current building cycle is measured in units rather than dollars.
Cranbrook cautions that its permit figures can change because permits may subsequently be cancelled, altering totals reported from one quarter or year to another.
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