Kamloops home builder projects slowdown in 2023 construction, City Gardens to keep permit values up

KAMLOOPS — More than half of the $415 million in construction permits were pulled for residential projects. The city says 816 units were started in 2022, doubling last year’s totals.

“People were coming off 2021. They had been making their plans and getting ready for another busy 2022,” said President of the Canadian Home Builders’ Association Central Interior Tom Calne. “For us specificially, we noticed a slowdown after the first interest rate bump and sales have certainly slowed down for us, and that’s certainly the case for my peers as well.”

However, Calne says the residential numbers are a little bit skewed with the Kelson’s City Gardens project underway.

“When you look at the numbers between 2021 and 2022 [with] small in-fill developments, single-family houses, they’re not that different,” he noted. “We had some really large projects come on this year, so we had the Kelson City Gardens, which really increased the number of multi-family. Then we had another couple large apartment complexes come on.”

Expected to take about six years to complete, City Gardens is a 525-unit multi-family development that will see two high-rise buildings and four six-storey buildings.

City Gardens is part of a revival of more multi-family projects after a hiatus last year.

On the commercial side, projects accounted for more than $161 million of the 2022 values.

“I think the big places we saw is a lot of industrial activity. There were a number of warehouse projects happen in Dallas,” said the city’s building and engineering development manager Jason Dixon. “On the institutional side, we had some big permits that went out to TRU. There was a really big permit at RIH for renovations, which is the last part of the Patient Care Tower project.”

Dixon expects a drop-off in permits this year, but says the City Gardens project will keep totals up.

“I think the big one is the continuing of the City Gardens in 2023. We’ve definitely seen a slowdown the last couple months of 2022, I think not surprisingly. How much activity we see as the year goes on, it’s hard to tell.”

For home builders like Calne, the forecast for 2023 is looking down.

“If you’re not selling houses, you’re not building houses, and at the moment the market is quite slow,” said Calne. “So I think people will be taking a breather and not starting those homes unless they have sales.”