Jeremy Deutsch - Kamloops This Week Published: June 11, 2009
From slabs of concrete to words on a page, construction of the new North Shore library got underway this week — almost a year to the day the project was announced. While the library portion is expected to be complete by this time next year, the residential units accompanying the project will come a little later. The developers are holding off construction for now, but insist they plan to follow through with the condo units. Casey VanDongen, president of Tri-City Contracting, said the company is hoping to start marketing the development at the end of the month. “It’s set up so that we could stop after the library permit, but we certainly don’t want to,” VanDongen told KTW. “We’re trying to get the marketing started so that we can proceed.”
Library Square, in the heart of the North Shore on Tranquille Road, is a public-private partnership, or P3 — the first of its kind in Kamloops — that will combine the library with a 150-residential unit development and commercial space. The Thompson-Nicola Regional District has partnered with Tri-City Contracting on the development. VanDongen said the residential component will now be completed in three phases, with the first phase consisting of 56 units. He blamed part of the delay on the complex procedure in getting permit approval. The development is the first air-space parcel subdivision in Kamloops, a form of zoning that allows the library and condo strata to be dealt with separately by the city.
As for the library, it’s expected to cost $6 million. When complete, the 20,000-square-foot library will be more than double the size of the current facility. The roughly 8,500 square feet of commercial space is expected to be completed at the same time as the library.
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