Category: Kamloops Real Estate News

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.”

This article appeared on the Kamloops Daily News website on March 28th, 2012 and was written by Michele Young.

A long public hearing didn’t give neighbours of a proposed apartment and mixed-use building on Ninth Avenue and Fraser Street the answer they were looking for.

City council voted five to three Tuesday night in favour of allowing Lion Rock Developments to build a five-storey apartment where the Bridge Baptist Church now stands.

The company owns the church building; the Bridge Baptist rents the space but pastor Michael Oatway told council the room that’s being allotted for the church in the new plan is too small and he’ll be looking for a new location.

Coun. Ken Christian was absent from Tuesday’s public hearing. Councillors Donovan Cavers, Marg Spina and Arjun Singh voted against allowing the development.

Cavers, who lives in the area, said in the end, he felt the proposal was too big. Five storeys was just too high and too intrusive for the neighbours.

“This is the first decision I’ve been most torn one way or the other. I really support infill, I really support larger density developments near transit routes, which this one was as well. I support mixed-use developments,” he said Wednesday.

“I didn’t support it because I felt it was too big, five storeys is too high. And I felt they could have done more meaningful consultation with the neighbourhood.”

Coun. Pat Wallace said the decision was a tough one. The fact the public hearing went until 11:30 p.m. indicated just how difficult and controversial it was.

“This is a painful discussion I’m subjected to over and over. We’ve got to get densification, we’ve got to get the cars out of town. And right across from this proposal was a bus stop,” she said.

But there are big apartment buildings downtown and on the North Shore, with houses around them, she noted.

“That pain has to be shared. Nobody likes intrusion. People want their privacy protected, we can’t do that. My neighbour across the lane is higher than me. My neighbours can look in my yard.”

Wallace said she expects more projects like this one to come up in the future.

“I know that people are disappointed. But I still had to look at the greater issue. The land use is good. There’s a lot of pain in the decisions we make.”

The proposal calls for 52 apartment units — 33 one-bedrooms and 17 two-bedrooms — as well as space for a church, multi-purpose use, a 10-child day care and eight-seat coffee shop. It’s located directly across from the John Peterson building of South Kamloops secondary.

Many of the 60 people who crowded into the Interior Savings Centre for the public hearing said they didn’t want the development.

Fraser Street resident Barb Stratmoen, who has lived on Fraser Street for 30 years. She pointed out the area has three other apartment buildings in a three block radius that meet or exceed the recommended density in KamPlan.

“It’s a high density plan and high density proposal,” she said.

The height of the building would also see her lose her privacy and the parking lot behind her home — currently used by the school district office during the day and empty at night — is slated to be used by the apartment dwellers and their visitors in evenings and on weekends.

Don Ferguson of the recently formed Sagebrush Neighbourhood Association, said the largest elementary school in the city, Lloyd George, is a few blocks away, as is the largest high school, South Kamloops secondary. Beattie high school is also sharing space in the high school, making for even more traffic in the area, particularly when classes start and end.

Ferguson said there’s one four-storey apartment in the area, but the rest of the buildings in the neighbourhood are lower than that. There are no five-storey structures.

“We feel this is significant and overstepping the principles of KamPlan. What are targets and how will we know when to stop densifying for the neighbourhood,” he said.

He also appealed to council to do a neighbourhood plan for his part of town, too.

The owner of the four-plex right beside the church said he wasn’t notified of the developer’s neighbourhood meeting held back in October.

His tenants have lived in his building for years; one couple has been there for 37 years, he said. His concern was the building shadow would put some of them in the dark, and that parking behind his four-plex would be impacted.

City planner Linda Piroddi said the developer stepped back the top of the building and reoriented it to lessen the shadow that earlier plans had shown.

Lion Rock also plans to save the tall trees along Fraser and Ninth, she said. And there are 88 parking spaces included for the 52 residential units, visitors and other services in the building.

The units would be sold, and it would be up to the strata to decide if they could be rented out.

This article appeared on the Kamloops Daily News website on March 27th, 2012 and was written by Michele Young.

City council heard loud opposition Tuesday night from residents who live near South Kamloops secondary who don’t want to see a five-storey apartment building in the neighbourhood.

Council was still hearing from people at a public hearing and hadn’t made a decision by 10 p.m.

Most of the 60 people who crowded into the Interior Savings Centre for the public hearing said they didn’t want the five-storey, 52-unit housing development proposed for the church property at Ninth Avenue and Fraser Street.

Lion Rock Developments has plans to tear down the existing church and build ground level space for a small coffee shop, a 10-child day care, multi-purpose space and church.

But Michael Oatway, pastor at the Bridge Baptist Church currently renting the church, said if the building goes, so does his congregation.

The new building has a small space for a church, but it’s inadequate. So if the plan goes ahead, his church will go elsewhere, he said.

Fraser Street resident Barb Stratmoen, who has lived on Fraser Street for 30 years. She pointed out the area has three other apartment buildings in a three block radius that meet or exceed the recommended density in KamPlan.

“It’s a high density plan and high density proposal,” she said.

The height of the building would also see her lose her privacy and the parking lot behind her home — currently used by the school district office during the day and empty at night — is slated to be used by the apartment dwellers and their visitors in evenings and on weekends.

Don Ferguson of the recently formed Sagebrush Neighbourhood Association, said the largest elementary school in the city, Lloyd George, is a few blocks away, as is the largest high school, South Kamloops secondary. Beattie high school is also sharing space in the high school, making for even more traffic in the area, particularly when classes start and end.

Ferguson said there’s one four-storey apartment in the area, but the rest of the buildings in the neighbourhood are lower than that. There are no five-storey structures.

“We feel this is significant and overstepping the principles of KamPlan. What are targets and how will we know when to stop densifying for the neighbourhood,” he said.

He also appealed to council to do a neighbourhood plan for his part of town, too.

The owner of the four-plex right beside the church said he wasn’t notified of the developer’s neighbourhood meeting held back in October.

His tenants have lived in his building for years; one couple has been there for 37 years, he said.His concern was the building shadow would put some of them in the dark, and that parking behind his four-plex would be impacted.

City planner Linda Piroddi said the developer stepped back the top of the building and reoriented it to lessen the shadow that earlier plans had shown.

Lion Developments also plans to save the tall trees along Fraser and Ninth, she said. And there are 88 parking spaces included for the 52 residential units, visitors and other services in the building.

The units would be sold, and it would be up to the strata to decide if they could be rented out.

This article appeared  in the Kamloops Daily News on March 23rd, 2012 and was written by Michele Young.
People in Kamloops are going to be getting swollen heads, with two studies in one week pointing to the city as a great place to be.

First, MoneySense Magazine rated Kamloops 44th out of 190 Canadian cities for livability.

Then on Thursday, KPMG ranked Kamloops as top B.C. community for overall competitiveness to do business.

Venture Kamloops executive director Dan Sulz said the accounting firm’s ratings looked at 26 factors — things like land prices, taxes, labour costs, real estate and utilities — in making the choice.

Other B.C. cities vying against Kamloops were Prince George, Vancouver and Victoria.

The KPMG rating was something that’s important to help with getting Kamloops recognized among international investors, Sulz said.

“This is also an international report. It’s very important that Kamloops fared above the other communities in B.C. as we try to promote ourselves internationally,” he said.

“When I talk to international investors, they ask me how we fared on the KPMG report.”

It was those questions that prompted him to sign Kamloops up for this year’s ranking — a first for this city.

Participating cities pay for the service of being ranked by KPMG. But Sulz said the money spent has great value when it comes to marketing and promotional uses.

“I was listening to international companies saying this is an important report we rely on in terms of competitiveness,” he said.

“There is value in being able to be ranked in this publication.”

Between the two reports, Kamloops stands out in terms of availability of labour, affordability of lifestyle for employees, quality of life for employees with what the City has done with the Tournament Capital program, and location, services and infrastructure that the city has that companies can benefit from, he said.

Venture Kamloops hasn’t been alone in helping the city’s business image. Sulz said the Chamber of Commerce and other local business associations have contributed.

And even social agencies have helped because they build infrastructure and services in the community that are important to the quality of life Kamloops offers, he said.

“It’s not just about building things that are good for business; it’s about building things that are good for the community. I was surprised and ecstatic to see us ranked as we were. But when you look at every group and organization working hard in the community, it doesn’t surprise me.”

Mayor Peter Milobar said Kamloops needs to let outsiders know about what it has to offer, and rankings such as these two help with that.

“When you combine business competitiveness with one of the best cities to live in Canada, you’ve got a community that is positioned to grow and prosper. That’s something we all have a stake in and can be proud of,” he said.