Interest in Spirit Square housing project high, construction to start this fall

Aug 29, 2018 | 1:50 PM

KAMLOOPS — The developer behind a housing project at Spirit Square, which will feature a mix of market and affordable housing, says the demand for units, especially on the affordable housing spectrum, has been strong, even though construction has not yet started. 

Joshua Knaak, a partner with Arpa Investments, told CFJC Today following a public hearing on Tuesday night that seniors have already been contacting the developer and ASK Wellness, inquiring about availability of units in the building. 

“[Executive director of ASK Wellness] Bob Hughes was telling me just the other day that he has never seen as much interest in a project as he’s seeing for this,” noted Knaak. “That demand for affordable seniors housing is very strong. In fact, we as the developer are getting calls, probably a call every two weeks. How do I get my name on this list? How do I become part of this?”

The Spirit Square project is expected to begin in the fall and take about 16 months to complete. It will feature a mix of 33 residential units and 43 affordable housing units for seniors, the latter of which will be run by ASK Wellness.

The project took one big step forward on Tuesday night when city council approved the rezoning of the land. Council, which has fully supported the project from the beginning, unanimously approved the rezoning and also awarded the development permit to allow the project to move forward. 

“Now it’s in the hands of the developer,” said Mayor Ken Christian. “And I’m hopeful they’ll get on with that because as we have talked about, we’re short about 2,000 units of affordable housing in this city. This will be a start towards getting those kinds of housing units out there for the public and getting addresses for people.”

Arpa Investments, the developer on the project, said the building permit has been submitted, but with the city approving the rezoning everything else should fall into place, allowing for construction to begin in a couple months.

“There’s all the legal work with the finalization of the land transfers, but that’s not the fun stuff. The fun stuff will be the building permit application, which is already underway. We’ll be waiting for that to be approved,” said Knaak. “We’ll be getting a demo application, so we can begin site prep. We will for sure be building this fall.”

Knaak also noted the lack of opposition to the project at Tuesday’s public hearing speaks volumes to how the community feels about the development.  

“For a project of this nature to go ahead with so few roadblocks against it. Really, there was no significant pushback,” he said. “That’s a testament to the work that was done by the city, by community groups like the McDonald Park Neighbourhood Association, the North Shore BIA and many others, to make sure that everybody’s being brought along through this process and nobody’s blindsided.”