Image Credit: CFJC Today / Adam Donnelly

By Jill Sperling

Catalpa Community

Cooper Family Foundation breaks ground on 73-home Wings Above Kamloops project

Sep 27, 2019 | 4:56 PM

KAMLOOPS — The Cooper Family Foundation has embarked on yet another project to benefit the community.

“I am so excited,” said Tod Cooper. “I basically have to restrain myself. Every time I’m out here, and I’m out here at least three or four times a week, I walk around and I get so excited, because we can visualize what this looks like.”

Construction of homes in the Catalpa Community is expected to begin in the next week or so.

Members of the Cooper Family Foundation and Kamloops Search and Rescue broke ground on the Wings Above Kamloops Project today (Sept. 27).

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The project will benefit Kamloops Search and Rescue and the Search, Rescue Detection (SRD) K9’s of BC.

“It was a natural fit because we had undertaken the search for the building for a new home for Kamloops Search and Rescue,” Cooper said. “It was just a natural fit. We started doing this project, at least on the drawing table, and at the same time we’d committed to building a facility for Kamloops Search and Rescue and the two just paired up very well.”

73 homes will be constructed on the site along Ord Road in Brocklehurst and $10,000 from the sale of each home will be going towards the new Kamloops Search and Rescue Facility.

Image Credit: CFJC Today / Adam Donnelly

“We’ve got the new SAR home, it’s going to need furniture, it’s going to need more equipment,” KSAR President Alan Hobler said. “We’re growing in size as well, so we’re going to need all kinds of new stuff, new computers, probably a new vehicle.”

Kamloops Search and Rescue and the SRD K9’s of BC will move into their new home at the former Bowler Time on Eighth Street next spring.

“We’re going to have an indoor training centre and it will help us train our dogs for obedience and scent detection work … There’s nothing like it in the province, and it’s going to be one of a kind and it’s going to be great,” said Mike Ritcey of the SRD K9’s of BC.

Those who purchase a home at the Catalpa Community can also expect a surprise gift from one of 73 local businesses.

Two of the homes have already sold.

“The price-range I think is one of the things that is most attractive,” Cooper said. “The houses are starting at $399,000 and the highest priced house on this entire site will be $459,000, which is signficantly below the Kamloops (median) price rate. Now, these are all brand new houses.”

The community is based around nature and many trees on the site have been saved, including a catalpa tree, from which the project gets its name.