Work to demolish the former Northbridge Hotel at 377 Tranquille Road in Kamloops is set to get underway on Friday.

Capital Projects Supervisor Ryan Maalerud says the City has awarded a contract to Clearview Demolition, which will begin to mobilize later this week.

“Essentially from the public perspective, you’ll see fencing going up around the perimeter of the property and the first few months will be fairly quiet while we remove contents and then start the hazardous material abatement,” Maalerud told NL News.

“All that has to be done obviously prior to bringing the building down.”

Maalerud says the entire project is expected to wrap up in about six months.

“We anticipate about four to five months of abatement and that is going to change obviously as we start taking things apart. Hopefully, we don’t find anything we aren’t aware of,” he said. “Then the building will come down and that process will be fast, probably three to four weeks, and the structure will be gone.”

“Nothing too dramatic,” Maalerud added when asked about the demolition process. “It will be excavator pulling the building kind of in on itself and then hauling it away. No implosions or wrecking balls on this one, but excavators and dump trucks.”

There will be security on site – and daily sweeps of the building – while the abatement work is taking place to keep people off the property. There will also be some traffic impacts on Tranquille Road when the demolition takes place, with Maalerud saying those details will come later this year.

Maalerud also told NL News the demolition and abatement work will cost the City around $2.6 million.

The City bought the hotel for $7.1 million in October 2021, with plans to redevelop the building into market housing, which is expected to happen “at a future date.”

Also included in that deal was the adjacent property at 346 Campbell Avenue, which BC Housing is buying for $3.8 million, with plans to construct a six-storey, 80-unit affordable housing building.