Kamloops city council met at two regular meetings in June, discussing a major housing development, the results of two alternative approval process counter-petitions, new restrictions for overnight shelters, and a retrospective on the major water main break in May, including lessons learned.

Agreement on major housing development

Council gave its stamp of approval to a major housing development on June 9. Half of a new development is set to rise at 535 Columbia Street, next to the Kamloops Court House. The 251-unit project will be constructed in two phases.

The first phase will see 126 units rise along Columbia Street, while the second will be set back off the road on property currently owned by the Ministry of Citizen Services.

The property is owned by BC Housing and will be operated by the Connective Support Society, which operates seven other multi-family complexes in town. As part of the BC Builds program, 20 percent of the building, or 26 units, must be rented at below market rates. The remainder of the building is being constructed as affordable housing.

Council was asked to consider approving the development with less than the normally required number of parking spots. For the first building, just 62 spots will be available. That includes 50 spaces for the 100 affordable housing units, six or seven for the below-market units and the remaining for visitors.

Councillors at the June 9 meeting gave thanks to Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps and then-Minister of Housing Ravi Kahlon, who provided assistance to the city and to council to help get the development off the ground.

“We are a very tight team of eight. We’ve got housing building everywhere. This one matters to me,” said Coun. Dale Bass.

Counter-petitions fall short

Two alternative approval project counter-petitions have failed. The counter-petitions against 965 McMaster Way and for the Tranquille Phase 3 enhancement project both came up well short of the required 10 percent threshold to keep council from passing borrowing bylaws for the projects.

The AAPs required at least 10 percent of the eligible electorate, or a minimum of 8,527 electors, to file response forms before May 29 in order to force a referendum on the matters.

The McMaster counter-petition saw 1,255 responses, or 1.47 percent of eligible voters, and the Tranquille counter-petition garnered 849 responses, or just under 1 percent of eligible voters.

The city purchased the land at 965 McMaster Way for $16.6 million in August 2025. The site is located next to the city’s civic operations yard, and the newly available land is anticipated to provide 25 to 50 years of growth for civic operations in the city. The city plans to continue leasing seven acres of the land to Westcan Transport, while work started immediately on another 2.8 acres to expand parking and laydown operations at the site.

While the property was purchased with short-term funds, the city’s plan was to use debt to purchase the property, which requires the approval of the electorate.

The Tranquille project, meanwhile, is a continuation of the work happening on Tranquille Road. The third phase of the sanitary main/enhancement project will see further work from Crestline Street to Southill Street and with work already underway, it is expected to be completed this year.

New overnight sheltering restrictions

With concerns of fire risk and public safety in mind, council has voted to approve restrictions and buffer zones for overnight sheltering, including around city infrastructure, areas designed for children, transportation routes and in parks.

The new rules restrict overnight sheltering within 10 metres of city infrastructure like water intakes or reservoirs, within 25 metres of playgrounds and waterparks, within 50 metres of schools and within four metres of sidewalks, roads and active transportation routes. The city has also restricted overnight camping in nature parks, linear parks and in open space areas.

In Kamloops, about 150 people are not accommodated by shelter space in the city, with most camping along the river.

Water main break retrospective

City staff have presented a retrospective on the water main break in May that affected nearly 20,000 of the city’s residents, citing successes and lessons learned from the 11-day ordeal.

On May 10, a water main break was detected in East Kamloops, affecting residents in Juniper Ridge, Valleyview, Dallas, Barnhartvale and Rose Hill. It took the city two days to track down the leak, but the parts to fix it took time and service was not restored in any capacity until May 14, and then only for essential use. A final water advisory was lifted on May 21.

The city report to council says there was good coordination among the city’s teams and consistent updates were provided, but also that there was a need to communicate earlier and more transparently.

City communications manager Kristen Rodrigue said the city saw 4,400 people sign up for VoyentAlert, the emergency notification system used by the city, as a response to the outage.

“We recognize internally that we deal with water main breaks all the time, and thought we had this handled. But we weren’t rising to the level of concern and the level of impact that the community was feeling, and that disconnect left people feeling frustrated,” Rodrigue said.

Rodrigue said the city is now planning a campaign to increase awareness of the alert system, which can be found on the city’s emergency preparedness page online.