A new visual landmark has been established in Kamloops, with part of the City Gardens project downtown now the tallest building in Kamloops.
Crews building the Trillium Tower have finished pouring the 15th floor of the eventual 24 story building, putting it one floor higher than the nearby Acacia Apartments, which is a 14 story building.
Kelson Group President Jason Fawcett says they expect to have the core foundation of the building topped off by June, with construction on the facade and the actual apartments getting underway in April.
Fawcett admits they had hoped to be finished by now, with the original construction schedule being one floor poured every 7 days.
“Been more closer to every ten or eleven days,” noted Fawcett in an interview on the NL Noon Report. “You get wind and some other factors, so there’s been a few delays. Right now we’re hoping for every seven working days.”
Despite the construction slow down, Fawcett says they are still making headway on making the Tower actually livable.
“The facade is what we’re working on in April. The window walls are starting, with the windows and the side walls starting on the 3rd floor,” noted Fawcett. “Then as the building continues to go up, we’re hoping that those window walls will be filled in, and that that the building will actually start to look like a full building, and not the shell that it is right now.”
Fawcett does concede this has pushed back their expected opening of the building from the spring to the summer of next year.
“A year ago we were a little optimistic,” admitted Fawcett. “When we started sales in May of 2022, we did tell buyers at that point that we would likely be opening the building in July of 2025. That’s our new target at the moment.”
He says in interim, the hope to have some of the local streets reopened soon, but concedes others may have to be shut down as the work continues.
“Right now we’re on 5th avenue. We’re hoping towards the end of the month here, or at least next month, that we’re going to be reopen those,” said Fawcett. “Then we’ve got some work over on 4th avenue, and then Battle Street. We’re trying to keep things moving as much as we can.”
Part of the closures will include the work to build the 600 stall parkade.
“The west portion of the parkade is just about to be poured to ground level,” said Fawcett. “Then we’ve got the north portion, which is on Battle Street, and we’re going to be filling that up. That should be done, hopefully, by the fall.”
Thus far, the tower is about half sold.
City Gardens was first unveiled as the largest development project in Kamloops in September of 2020, with the company laying out plans to create 525 market and rental units on the site.