Oliver Landing’s David Perehudoff and marketing director Leahann Nordin outside one of the last two units for sale in Phase 1

By ROY WOOD

After a series of delays, the Oliver Landing mid-level housing project near the heart of the town is back on track, with three units already occupied and construction of several more well under way.

Over the next couple of years, plans call for 10 fourplexes at the site near the corner of Sawmill Road and Co-op Avenue.

The first fourplex is built and two more are in various stages of completion. Those 12 units comprise what Senior Project Manager David Perehudoff calls Phase 1.

He said in an interview this week that 10 units in Phase 1 are sold, as are six units from among the 12 in Phase 2. The three-storey homes are between 1,350 and 1,450 square feet and are priced around the $360,000 mark.

Perehudoff said the company has sold only half of the units in the yet-to-be-built Phase 2. “(That’s) because that’s all we want to sell, because we want to have some available, when we build them, for people to buy when they come by,” he said.

The sales of the six Phase-2 units are secured by 10-per-cent deposits, he said.

Phase 3 of the development will see units abutting the hike-and-bike trail beside the Okanagan River. Perehudoff said there are “reservations” on 12 of the river-side units, although those commitments don’t require cash deposits.

Prices for the Phase-3 properties are currently pegged at between $409K and $454K, although prices seem to be a bit of a moving target based on a jump in Phase-1 units from $329,000 to $359,000 since the fall.

The number of sales and reservations hasn’t changed since August of last year, when Perehudoff said 16 units had been sold and 12 were reserved.

At an interview on site this Tuesday, Perehudoff said the company “hasn’t really been pushing” since the fall. As well, he said, there have been a number of delays in construction, several of them “due to educating the building inspector.”

Perehudoff said Oliver Landing is incorporating many new building and insulating techniques that were unfamiliar to the town building department and it has taken extra time to get approvals. “We’re building a new product here,” he said.

At one point early this year, a stop-work order was imposed on the development because of differences between the town and the builder regarding the application of spray-foam insulation. The order lasted about a month and was lifted in February.

The inclusion of the insulation in question is one of the innovations in the development that Perehudoff says will help reduce energy costs. Others include triple-paned windows and on-demand hot water. He says the target is to keep total power costs below $100 per month.

The long-range plans for Oliver Landing include as many as 130 homes on the site of a former horse ranch.

As for the neighbourhood, Perehudoff says there are advantages to being in an industrial/commercial area, including the fact that after five p.m. and on weekends it’s “actually very quiet.” As well, he said, downtown and the town’s recreation centre and arena are within an easy walk.

The town works yard runs down the southern boundary of the property and while some of the units will overlook it, there are trees and a chain-link fence along the boundary and white board fence is planned as well.

Landscaping of the property will begin later this month, said Perehudoff.