This is a conceptual drawing of what the North Shore's Town Centre, the neighbourhood near the Fortune Shopping Centre, could look like in the future (Image Credit: City of Kamloops)

By Chad Klassen

NORTH SHORE PLANS

Future North Shore plans include development, a pier, Rivers Trail extension

Apr 30, 2021 | 4:28 PM

KAMLOOPS — It’s been more than a decade since the North Shore Neighbourhood Plan has been updated. While there have been developments like The Station in the last couple years, the city wants to build on that momentum.

There have been conceptual plans made of what the North Shore could look like in 20 years, and the city is now in the process of collecting community feedback before solidifying plans.

As part of the KamPlan, adopted by council in 2018, there would more housing developments and commercial space.

“Looking at the North Shore Town Centre, how would we re-imagine the North Shore Town Centre? Increase density, provide more shops and amenities, make it more pedestrian-oriented,” said City of Kamloops Community Planning and Sustainability Manager Jason Locke.

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The North Shore’s Town Centre includes the neighbourhood near the Fortune Shopping Centre. It’s one of three different neighbourhoods the city is looking at enhancing over the next two decades. The others are the Tranquille Corridor and Riverfront.

“Creating these three areas uniquely characterized in the corridor gives us an ability to treat them like three different neighbourhoods,” said executive director of the North Shore Business Improvement Association Jeremy Heighton. “So we can bring developers who want to look at arts and culture to the centre hub [Town Centre], we can bring somebody who’s looking at high density to the top end, and we can bring somebody who’s looking at community development at the bottom end.”

One of the more grand ideas that could be part of the long-term North Shore plan is building a pier over the Thompson River using old pilings already in place.

The city is proposing these old bridge pilings on the Thompson River be used for a pier in the future (Image Credit: CFJC Today)

Conceptually, the pier would stretch halfway over the river, although the city is open to the idea, depending on cost, of stretching it all the way to the south shore.

There are also plans to connect the Rivers Trail all along the Thompson, connecting the trail at McArthur Island to the Overlanders Bridge.

“There are areas where there’s a missing piece where the Rivers Trail is not on the river, connects inland,” noted Locke. “So if there are opportunities to have a connection to the Rivers Trail along waterfront, that would be ideal.”

Heighton is all for plans to improve the North Shore, but he also wants the plans to be extensive but realistic.

“We put these great plans, these grandiose plans in place, and then we don’t have an execution plan behind them,” he said. “My vision is 30 years from today. So my question, once it’s approved at council, is — so what’s in Year 1? What’s in Year 5? What’s in Year 10? How do we build a plan to allow us to get there in a logical and intelligent way, but also allows us to economically budget for what’s required.”

The city plans more public engagement on the designs next month before presenting it to council for approval at the end of the year.