Image: Kent Simmonds / CFJC Today

By Dylana Kneeshaw

ILLUMINATE NORTH SHORE

NSBIA eyes future lighting upgrades along Tranquille Road

Jan 9, 2025 | 6:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — The first phase of a new project to add lighting and banners on the city’s north shore wrapped up last month, with plans to expand on the work and eventually install lighting improvements from the Overlanders Bridge all the way to Kamloops Airport.

The North Shore Business Improvement Association says the idea of new lights and banners along Tranquille Road came up several years ago, and the first phase of the plan was recently completed.

Executive Director Jeremy Heighton says the concept fit well with Tourism Kamloops’ Illuminate Kamloops project that adds interactive lighting displays around the city to encourage people to explore the area. Now, the North Shore Business Improvement Association says it wants to see similar work done for the rest of Tranquille Road.

“Now as we look at the new multi-use pathway that’s going to be going in by the airport, one of our requests to the city is, ‘Let’s make sure we have banner poles on there,'” explains Heighton. “[The city was] just talking about putting up those standard pathway lights and we said, ‘Well, let’s do it now and put the right banner poles in there’ because then we can actually start to work on connecting the two projects together. Then we’ll slowly work our way up and down the corridor and then ultimately we’ll have this ribbon of lights all the way across the corridor, which is kind of cool.”

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Heighton says the NSBIA wants to work with the city on those future additions, both to enhance the appearance of the Tranquille corridor and to increase lighting in sections with poor visibility at night.

“Lighting is a key aspect to community safety, so now you have this sense of place here and it can help create this sense of community safety, as well,” he adds. “And with the work that we’re doing around the new integrated access hub and all the other work that we’re doing, we anticipate that this is just another piece of that community development puzzle.”

The $320,000 cost for the first phase was paid for by BC Gaming grant money and the NSBIA says banners and lighting upgrades for the rest of the road will be paid for when more grant opportunities come up, meaning there’s no exact timeline for when the rest of the installations will be completed.