Jefferson City spent about half of 2019 recovering from the May 22 EF-3 tornado that affected 3 square miles of the city.
The damage and recovery efforts had a noticeable effect on the number of alteration and addition permits issued by the city.
During the 2019 fiscal year, which runs Nov. 1-Oct. 31, the city issued 597 permits for a total value of about $68.8 million.
During that time, 349 residential alteration and addition permits were given out by the city, with a total value of $6,749,698 - an increase from the 2018 number of 193, with a total value of $3,439,703.
The year 2019 also claims the highest number of residential alteration and addition permits on record since at least 1988, the latest data available. The second highest comes in 2016 at 260 permits.
On the commercial side, 194 alteration permits were awarded for a total value of $40,434,813.
Larry Burkhardt, building official for Jefferson City, said a lot of these can be attributed to the tornado damage.
"A couple hundred of those permits included in that report are because of the tornado, and around $10 million is attributed to that," Burkhardt said.
Despite demolitions caused by damage from the May 22 tornado, there were actually the same number of demolition permits in 2019 as the previous year at 27 permits.
Of those, 18 were residential and nine were commercial.
Burkhardt said they've attributed 30 demolitions to tornado damage. The report states 27 total demolitions because it ended at the fiscal year in October.
"Definitely an EF-3 going through town had an impact on those numbers," Burkhardt said.
He said tornado recovery is going to continue into 2020, meaning more new builds in the coming years, especially for those with more damage like Riley Chevrolet and the Hawthorne Park Apartments.
"The tornado had an impact and still will have an impact for the next couple of years," he said.
As for new builds, there wasn't as much of a change between 2019 and previous years. There were 43 permits issued for new single-family residential construction and four for new multi-family residential, compared to 47 for single-family and one for multi-family in 2018.
Burkhardt credited the smaller number of new single-family residential builds to increasingly full new subdivisions.
"There's only a couple subdivisions that people are trying to build in, and people are starting to look at the last lots in the subdivisions," Burkhardt said.
New single-family residential permits were higher in Cole County in 2019, at 135. Burkhardt said there is more space for new builds outside the city limits, where city building permits aren't issued.
New non-residential builds were slightly lower in 2019 with seven permits issued by the city, compared to 12 in 2018. However, the number tends to fluctuate - there were only seven issued in 2017 and 12 in 2016.
Of those seven, two were industrial, one was hospital/institutional, one was offices/professional and three were restaurant/bar/nightclub.
Overall, Burkhardt said the numbers indicate a positive construction outlook in the area.
"We still seem to have a healthy construction environment which is attributed to the economy," he said. "Construction is the first thing to go out and the last thing to come back, so when construction is up, that means it's pretty good - people are confident and willing to invest into facilities and structures."
In 2020, Burkhardt is expecting a similar year, but with one major difference - he expects to see the number of alteration permits drop back down as tornado repairs decrease.
"To me, it will be about the same," he said. "People will keep building, so I would expect it to be somewhere around the same."