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Steamboat Springs — The dollar value of building permits in Steamboat Springs and Routt County continues to lag in 2011 but has started to show slight improvements through April and the beginning of May.

Routt Coun­­ty Re­­gion­­al Building Department Official Carl Dunham said that through April, his department has seen 20 applications for permits in Steamboat Springs and four in Routt County, excluding Hayden, which operates its own building department. The aggregate value of the April permits was $4.3 million.

That comes on the heels of March seeing only 11 permits in Steamboat and Routt.

Routt County’s combined permit valuation year-to-date through April, including Steamboat Springs, was $6.4 million, however, compared with $17 million in 2010 and $29.1 million in 2009.

Through April, Steamboat and Routt County have seen 56 permits, compared with 103 at the same time last year.

“I would say a lot of it was the weather,” Dunham said. “We’ve had dozens of permits sitting here at the beginning of the month waiting for fees. My guess is they didn’t want to pay fees because they didn’t want to start in a nonproductive situation.”

Dunham said the building department typically does about 20 percent of its business in the first four months of the year.

Although the numbers are still lagging, early returns for May indicate an upward trend. Through 18 days of May, the total valuation of permits for the month already was at $3.7 million, or more than half of the first four months.

Although that’s behind past years, May is where “it starts to jump, and that’s where we start to see production,” Dunham said. “I don’t know any reason why it would change.”

Most of the permits are devoid of new construction, with four permits pulled for single-family homes in January through April and three in May.

Still, around the construction industry, the feeling is this year should at least be better than last year.

“I think it’s been a slow start for most people,” Fox Construction Vice President Sarah Fox said. “The weather has not been good this spring with the rain and snow. But we’re doing a lot this summer. When I say a lot, I mean more than last year.”

Fox said that in talking with architects, there is little new construction but that the number of additions and remodels is up.

Native Excavating owner Ed MacArthur said he remained guarded about this year, saying his company has been busier pricing projects than last year. Although the private building sector has been slow, MacArthur said the company hopes to make budget this year, mostly by picking up municipal jobs.

“It’s still about 33 percent of what we did in 2007,” he said. “We’ve bid a lot more; it’s just a lot of the stuff isn’t taking off.”

The reverberations of the murky summer construction market have spread to other businesses.

Twin Enviro Services President Dave Epstein said the company has felt the construction crunch for more than a year now. He said the company is coming off one of its worst months, with numbers down 40 to 45 percent.

“I contribute that to the downturn in the construction industry,” he said. “I’m hopeful that it’s picking up, but I don’t see it this season.”

If there is a silver lining, it might be construction cost. Costs aren’t down as much as people might think, but Fox said if there is a time to build, add on or remodel, now is it.

“Prices are good,” she said. “People think you are getting a lot more off, and it’s not going to be 50 percent. But I’d say it’s 15 or 20 percent off the top from a few years ago. That’s probably the lowest it’s going to be.”

— To reach Luke Graham, call 970-871-4229 or email lgraham@SteamboatToday.com