‘Unchartered waters’

Real estate market not all gloom and-doom over looming pulp mill closure, says realtor

NEW GLASGOW — The pending closure of Northern Pulp isn’t necessarily gloom and doom for the Pictou County real estate market, says a local broker.

“It’s a little too early to tell,” says Susan Green, of Coldwell Banker MB Green Realty.

“It’s going to take six months to a year for the trends to start showing up.”

She said the Town of Pictou might even see an uptick in the real estate market once the mill closes, taking an estimated 300 jobs with it and spinoff jobs as well.

“In Pictou, it is likely to be either not impacted, or impacted positively, in my opinion,” Green said, adding that “Pictou specifically, should be neutral, at worse.”

Green, who has been in the real estate business for more than 40 years, recalls that the 1992 Westray mine explosion resulted in a period of bust for the real estate market, one that took this area “18 months to two years to come out of.”

But she noted that when Michelin downsized several years ago (the county has recently enjoyed a surge of job creation at the Granton plant), the impact was minimal, as was the case when Trentonworks closed in the first decade of the 21st century.

“People who worked at Trentonworks already had their own homes,” Green said, noting that many employees affected by the rail car plant closing down kept Pictou County as a home base, even if they had to move away for work.

Peter Fraser, a realtor with Viewpoint Real Estate, said he took roughly a dozen phone calls over the past couple of weeks, from employees who work directly at Northern Pulp, or people in related spinoff jobs.

He said they were inquiring about the process of unloading their homes.

“I’m very nervous for them,” he said.

Fraser added that because of the salaries that Northern Pulp workers are drawing, areas such as west side New Glasgow, and the subdivision developments off Fraser’s Mountain, could be adversely affected.

“We are in unchartered waters,” he said. “I’m expecting (the Northern Pulp closure) to have a negative impact of some kind, but to what extent is uncertain.”