Sarah Lee's Real Estate Blog

CFJC has a series of articles about ‘Building Kamloops Series’

1. Densification the future on the North Shore ( https://cfjctoday.com/article/628801/building-kamloops-part-5-densification-future-north-shore): Many projects have been building diversity and vibrancy on “The Shore” within the past few years such as The Station on Tranquille, ‘Spirit Square’ with 43 affordable rental units for seniors as well as another 47 unit development through Joshua Knaak with Arpa Investments.
2. 500 Units still waiting to be developed in Juniper (https://cfjctoday.com/article/628377/building-kamloops-part-4-500-units-still-waiting-be-developed-juniper): ”The easily developable land that we’ve been working through the last 4-5 years has pretty much been absorbed”… “The areas that we’re going into now are more vertically-challenged and have much tougher requirements to develop them.” With a current squeeze on land, Juniper West is going to slow down development and reduce the number of lots made available each year- as a way to sustain building for a few more years. “We’re probably looking at somewhere around 30-35 lots a year, and a big part of the reduction is just the availability of the land and the issues getting into those tougher areas.” The city says its looking at reducing road widths to make development work in Juniper. “Looking at widths, and potentially right-of-way widths as well, to accommodate a 20-metre road right-of-way gets pretty challenging”. MacKenzie (Juniper West Developments) hopes the city will be lenient on its policies relating to street grade which requires a maximum 10% grade in neighbourhoods.
3. Dufferin Expansion to Push Closer to Kenna Cartwright Park (https://cfjctoday.com/article/627925/building-kamloops-part-3-dufferin-expansion-push-closer-kenna-cartwright-park): Dufferin is part of the projected 43% growth in the southwest sector of Kamloops over the next 20 years, While there isn’t as much land to develop in Aberdeen there’s likely enough for five years.  “McCurrach’s company Homex Development Corporation owns most of the developable land in Dufferin. He says the expansion of the neighbourhood will move closer to Kenna Cartwright Park,. where it will come with more rocky terrain – which will drive prices up.”…” Quite often we’re dealing with rocks, so houses in general there are some added costs with retaining walls, with extra engineering with geotechnical engineers. So there is a slight added cost as we go up, but the cost of housing in general right now is going up.” “…there are definitely some challenges, not only for the developer putting in his servicing but also for us as builders,” said Richardson. “We got get in there and starting chipping rock out. We can’t blast once all the houses have gone in.”
4. Sun Rivers. Geotech struggles with existing new construction, but there’s room for 1000 more units to build. (https://cfjctoday.com/article/629300/building-kamloops-part-6-sun-rivers-has-1000-units-left-build)