It appears I wasn’t the only one cursing in the workshop in 2014. (I can promise you the best piece of advice you’ll ever receive in life is not to wear a necktie next to a lathe.) New numbers are out, and 2014 wasn’t a very good year for the local building industry.

City Hall has released year-end building permit totals, and 2014 ended up being the second worst year on record in terms of new single-family housing starts. City records go back to 1956. Builders pulled permits for just 101 single-family homes in Lawrence. That’s a nearly 35 percent decrease from the 155 permits issued in 2013.

The slowdown ended a two-year streak of rising single-family home numbers in Lawrence. The city hit its all-time low in 2011, when just 95 single-family homes were started. But the single-family building market posted double-digit percentage gains in both 2012 and 2013.

There may be some reason for optimism in 2015. (Case in point: I have one less tie.) The last quarter of 2014 showed signs of the single-family market picking up. December was the busiest month of the year, with 14 permits issued. November was the second busiest with 13.

There also may be reason to be concerned. (Case in point: I own other ties.) Preliminary numbers from the Kansas City metro area aren’t yet indicating a slowdown in the housing market there. The Kansas City Home Builders Association hasn’t yet released its year-end report for 2014, but through November the association was reporting single-family home starts had risen by 2 percent in the KC metro area. To give you an idea of how many houses are being added in some of our neighboring communities, Olathe issued 485 single-family building permits through November. Overland Park checked in at 369, Shawnee at 189 and Lenexa at 180.

Lawrence used to put up comparable numbers. For 14 consecutive years — from 1991 to 2004 — Lawrence issued more than 300 single-family building permits per year. In more recent years, apartment construction has become more prevalent in Lawrence. Those numbers also took a dip in 2014. Lawrence issued permits for 143 apartment units, which was the lowest total since 2006. But I wouldn’t worry much about the apartment numbers. Apartment construction comes in batches, and it mainly was just dumb luck that the numbers weren’t higher this year. The city has approved two large apartment projects — the one across street from KU’s Memorial Stadium and the one on the northeast corner of Ninth and New Hampshire — that will start construction in a matter of weeks, but just didn’t pull a permit prior to the end of the year. Those two projects alone will produce more apartment units than all apartment projects combined in 2014. You should expect significant apartment development to occur in northwest Lawrence as well.

As for total construction in Lawrence, the city issued permits for projects valued at $99.7 million. About $87 million of it came from private-sector projects, while the rest came from government or other publicly funded projects.

The $99 million total was down significantly from the 2013 total of $171 million, but that was an all-time year with Rock Chalk Park, the library expansion and several other large projects. The $99 million total was in the ballpark of the 2010 to 2012 activity levels, which averaged about $105 million worth of projects per year.

Finally, we get to the list you’ve all been waiting on. (The last one.) Below is a list of the largest building projects in 2014. But before you look, see if you can guess the largest building project of the year. If you guess correctly, maybe I’ll make you something from my workshop as a prize. I’ve done some really interesting things “combining” fabrics and woods. In reverse order, because you are apt to cheat:

• 10. Petsmart renovation, 2727 Iowa St., $1 million.

• 10. Genesis health club renovation, 3201 Mesa Way, $1 million.

• 9. Medical clinic building, 4930 Overland Drive, $1.3 million.

• 8. Sigma Kappa sorority addition, 1325 West Campus Road.

• 7. Buffalo Wild Wings/multitenant commercial center, 2626 Iowa St., $1.8 million.

• 6. Corpus Christi Catholic School addition, 6001 Bob Billings Parkway, $2.3 million

• 5. Sprouts Farmers Market, 4740 Bauer Farm Drive, $3.7 million

• 4. 9 Del Lofts Apartments, 900 Delaware St., $4.4 million.

• 3. Menard’s, 1470 W. 31st St., $5.5 million.

• 2. Apartments at Frontier, 523 Frontier Road, $5.8 million.

• 1. Douglas County Public Works Complex, 3755 E. 25th Street, $11 million.

In other news and notes from around town:

• It hasn’t been a great week for the Rock Chalk Park project, as a new round of questions about some accounting issues between the public-private partnership have emerged. But there are good numbers associated with the project too. The city-owned recreation center — Sports Pavilion Lawrence — is posting some large attendance numbers.

A new report from the city shows attendance at the recreation center from October through December totaled 178,931. October was at about 53,000, while November was about 63,800 and December about 62,000. The drop in December is probably no reason for concern, since it is a well-known fact that the best exercise during the holidays is to repeatedly lift a 25-pound ham one fork-full at a time.

The city report provides some demographic information about who is using the facility as well. The average age of a key card holder is 40 years old. Now, this doesn’t count lots of the youth who play in the sports leagues at the center. They don’t have to have key cards to participate in leagues, so the city doesn’t have their demographics. (The youth sports teams, however, are counted in the attendance totals.) About 57 percent of the key card holders are female, and the rest are male, although hopefully you had already figured that out.

But perhaps the most surprising statistic is where key card holders live. About 41 percent live in the 66049 zip code, which is the far west Lawrence zip code. So, that’s not surprising given that Rock Chalk Park is in the far northwest corner of the city. But the second highest zip code area is 66044, which is primarily a central and East Lawrence zip code. That zip code accounts for about 27 percent of the users. Parks and recreation officials were pleased to see that because one of the concerns with the location of the center was that it would be too difficult for East Lawrence residents to use. The 66047 zip code accounted for 17 percent, the 66046 was at about 9 percent, and zip codes accounted for the rest, including about 1.6 percent from the Baldwin zip code and 1 percent from Eudora’s.

• One other thing to remember about Sports Pavilion Lawrence is that about 7,000 square feet of the 181,000 square-foot center is still empty. That was the spot designated for a wellness center that did not come to be. At least it hasn’t quite yet. I wouldn’t totally count out a wellness center at the site.

Parks and recreation leaders recently told the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Board that they hope to have that space filled either with classes or some other functions in the next six months. But first, they are trying to wrap up a sponsorship/naming rights deal for Sports Pavilion Lawrence. Mark Hecker, assistant director of parks and recreation, said use of that 7,000 square-foot space may play into a potential sponsorship/naming rights package.

Hecker didn’t provide any clues about who the city is talking with, but it is no secret that city officials have wanted Lawrence Memorial Hospital to operate a wellness center at the site. LMH didn’t jump at that opportunity earlier, but I think it may be a situation to keep an eye on. One of my many fascinating hobbies is to read the minutes of various meetings that happen around town. One of them was the minutes of a December meeting of LMH’s Marketing and Community Relations Committee. Those minutes talked about how the board discussed and ultimately recommended a “sponsorship that would require a significant long-term investment” from the hospital. The minutes noted the sponsorship would have to go through some other approvals at the hospital. I have no insight into whether that sponsorship would be for Sports Pavilion Lawrence, but it seems like something to keep an ear out for.