Published: August 13, 2008 10:29 am      

New casino boosts building permits to the $20 million level

July building permits topped the $20 million mark — meaning that McAlester is on pace to break its all-time record for a single year.

And the year isn’t even over yet.

The majority of the $20 million in building permits is from the multi-million dollar price tags of constructing a new Choctaw casino and a Hampton Inn.

“We’re on all-time record building pace,” Dennis Lalli said. “We had a huge month.”

Lalli is in charge of building permits for the city of McAlester.

The new Choctaw casino accounted for $12.3 million, which was more than half of the huge month of July’s total in building permits.

Although the casino will be a short distance outside the city limits, Lalli explained that it will use city utilities, which makes it count toward July’s staggering total.

The next largest project is the building of an 89 room Hampton Inn on South George Nigh Expressway. That project is estimated to cost $6.5 million.

Over the past several years, McAlester has seen an explosion in the building of hotels. Two of those hotels have not been constructed yet, but building permits have already been issued for them.

A record 2006 saw permits for $34.8 million were issued.

The July amount also dramatically topped the combined $12.2 million in building permits issued in the first half of the calendar year.

Smaller but still vital building permits were issued during the month of July, which ranged from $5,500 to $140,000.