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This article appeared on Kamloops This Week on May 1st, 2012 and was written by Andrea Klassen.

A housing project slated for the historic tuberculosis-sanatorium lands on Tranquille Road is beginning to bear fruit.

Or, rather, vegetables.

While the village-style development is still years away from construction, the organic farm that anchors the project is up and running.

Starting Saturday, May 26, the Tranquille Farm’s produce will go on sale in a new farmers’ market space that will run on weekends to the end of summer.

The neighbourhood plan for the Tranquille on the Lake development will also head to city council this month.

“This sets the vision for the next 30 or 40 years, so, it’s really a key issue,” said development manager Tim McLeod.

“Once this is behind there, then zoning will take place. Then we’ll do a phased development agreement, then start to build.”

The updated plan was on display on April 26 at a downtown open house McLeod said was meant to give council and the public an opportunity to see where the plan is at now.

Tranquille on the Lake could include up to 2,000 residential units, which would include apartment, townhome and single-family dwellings and seasonal houses.

While past plans for the site included an 18-hole golf course, McLeod said it was written out of the latest draft to save more space for the organic farm and orchard that will cover about 60 per cent of the 191-hectare property.

“There’s a huge groundswell of people looking for good-quality food,” he said.

“They’re really concerned about it and they want to live where that food is.”

A marina planned for the village has also become a “working waterfront,” which McLeod said could include boat-repair and fishing shops.

“It’s more of a West Coast feel,” he said.

“So, on a Saturday morning, you take your latte and you can go along the beachfront and enjoy it.”

If council finds favour with the development, McLeod estimated it will take about a year to get through the regulatory process and two more years to get the first phase of the project to the move-in stage.

On the farming side, owners B.C. Wilderness Tours are also drafting a farm plan for the province’s Agricultural Land Commission, which functions much as its neighbourhood plan does.

The company is still hoping to take a portion of its property out of the Agricultural Land Reserve and replace it with non-ALR lands McLeod said are better-suited to farming.

In addition to granting approval for the farmers’ market, the commission has already agreed to an on-site RV park.

The full neighbourhood plan is available at tranquille.ca.

Click here to read more information about the area.

This article appeared in the Kamloops Daily News on May 2nd, 2012 and was written by Andrea Klassen.

From a driveway on Fleming Place, Gordon Kerfoot is contemplating the future of his view — and his view of the future.

Above his street sits more than two hectares of wild grass and shrubs, separating neighbours downslope from Aberdeen elementary on Van Horne Drive.

For the past 19 years, the site and the view have remained about the same.

On Thursday, April 26, landowner Craftsman Ventures Ltd. sent Kerfoot a computerized rendering of what he can expect his view to be like should their plans for the lot proceed.

In the printout, a row of beige buildings peek out from behind the rooftops of Fleming Place — five being duplexes that will line the northern edge of a proposed 64-unit strata development headed to public hearing later this month.

“I showed it to my daughter Amy. She’s 14 years old,” he told KTW.

“She was like, ‘Ew.’”

Together with Joanne Swifton — who lives on another street below the development — and two other homeowners in the neighbourhood, Kerfoot has been collecting signatures for a petition opposing the strata project.

So far, at least one person in each of 101 homes in the area has signed.

Much of the controversy surrounding the project has to do with its current zoning. For several decades, the land has been zoned for church use, though city staff have said a move to multi-family zoning is consistent with Kamloops’ Official Community Plan.

Swifton and Kerfoot said many in the neighbourhood feel the densification — which includes 11 duplexes, six triplexes and a four-storey apartment building — doesn’t make sense in the area and feel the development is being unfairly sprung on them.

“I don’t have the choice of deciding now whether I’d like to live next door to a multi-family development,” Kerfoot said.

“If I go choose to live up in the [Aberdeen] Highlands, I know the zoning is already in place. You buy your home and know that’s going to be multi-family housing, medium density.”

The two are also concerned about how the new development will affect the stability of the slope on which they live.

According to Craftsman Ventures’ rezoning application, the site will contain a network of under-drains, impermeable liners and other measures to keep groundwater from running onto properties below.

However, Kerfoot said he is worried about what could happen if the system fails several years down the road, or if the system is not installed correctly, given past stability problems other developments have experienced in the Van Horne area.

Other concerns include noise for those closest to the development’s sole street-access point and a shadow study provided to Kerfoot by the developer, which he said shows houses below the apartment building could be blocked from the sun through the month of December.

A public hearing on the lot’s rezoning is set for Tuesday, May 15, but Swifton said many area residents see the project as a done deal that will be difficult to fight.

She and Kerfoot have invited councillors to tour the site in advance of that meeting, though two days after sending out the request, they had heard back only from Coun. Arjun Singh.

Though they are leading  the opposition charge, Kerfoot and Swifton said they expect some sort of multi-family project will eventually be built ion the property.

But, they would like to see the developer rework the current proposal so there is more of a buffer between the edge of the project and Fleming Place — and, perhaps, fewer units built.

“It says in all the plan, developments need to complement the neighbourhood,” Swifton said. “The development we’ve seen doesn’t complement our community and we’re the ones that have to live with it.”