By Chad Klassen

BUILDING KAMLOOPS (Part 4): 500 units still waiting to be developed in Juniper

Jul 3, 2018 | 3:01 PM

In the fourth instalment of our series Building Kamloops, we take a closer look at development in Juniper. It’s a community that has only one way in and one way out, but demand for homes in the area are high with beautiful views of the entire city. While there are some lots currently available, the developer Juniper West has some work to do in order to make all the land available in the neighbourhood.

Construction on Myra Place is among the busiest spots in the Juniper area, as home builders work on filling out the rest of the neighbourhood.

“Demand’s been very high this year. The real estate market’s been quite strong,” notes general manager of Juniper West Developments Doug MacKenzie. “The product and inventory that we’re offering right now is our second phase of Myra Place. It’s a 21-lot subdivision. It’s larger lots, some very nice view lots. Currently, that’s all we have in investory.”

Juniper West has developed about 45 single-family lots during the last five years — lots that have been snapped up quickly by the building community. 

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“Lots of families moving into the area. Real strong demand for single-family housing and it’s been going really well,” says owner of HKR Builders Kelly Reid. “We’re seeing some challenges around the supply of lots, like every area. It’s becoming more difficult to find single-family lots.”

But Juniper West is in the beginning stages of the newest development, building further and further up the hill. 

“The easily developable land that we’ve been working through the last 4-5 years has pretty much been absorbed,” says MacKenzie. “The areas that we’re going into now are more vertically-challenged and have much tougher requirements to develop them.”

But with a current squeeze on land, Juniper West is going to slow down development and reduce the number of lots made available every year — as a way to sustain building for a few more years.

“We’re probably looking at somewhere around 30-35 lots a year, and a big part of the reduction is just the availability of the land and the issues getting into those tougher areas.”

Juniper West says there are still 500 units, both single- and multi-family lots, to be developed. But MacKenzie says future development will require working closely with the City of Kamloops to gain access to the more challenging areas. 

“Whether it be the width of the right of way or the grade of the road, how big the lots are,” he says. 

The city say it’s looking at reducing road widths to make development work in Juniper. 

“Looking at widths, and potentially right-of-way widths as well, to accomodate a 20-metre road right-of-way gets pretty challneging,” says city director of development, engineering, and sustainability Marvin Kwiatkowski. “We’ve looked at potentially reducing that, but sometimes there are other factors because there are utilities involved, whether it’s BC Hydro, Telus.”

MacKenzie hopes the city will be lenient on its policies relating to street grade, which requires a maximum 10 per cent grade in neighbourhoods.

“We’ve got a bit of test project going on right now in upper Coldwater, and based on the success of that, I think we’ll move forward with some of the things we’re doing, and then hopefully we’ll try some new things in some future phases.”