A line up of vehicles trying to evacuate on July 1, 2021. (Photo via John Cantelo)
The City of Kamloops says work to build a second permanent access route to the Juniper Ridge neighbourhood has been delayed by at least a year to 2026.
The second permanent route connecting Qu’Appelle Boulevard and Rose Hill Road was expected to be open in 2025, but the City’s Development Director Marvin Kwiatkowski says the situation is currently out of City’s control.
“We put the application in on March 1 of 2022 in order to get onto the provincial land and start investigative work,” Kwiatkowski said. “We’ve been able to go onto the site for some minor works but not for some more significant works that we have to do as far as geotechnical goes. Still waiting on that.”
“We are finding and I think the province is probably backlogged as well in other areas, so we’re looking at typically it seems like a minimum one year, but more of a two year process for different approvals.”
Kwiatkowski says the City is hoping to get approvals from the Province this year, owing to the “high profile nature” and the need for the access route, which would serve the roughly 4,000 residents who call Juniper Ridge home.
“Some of the other emergency exits are not on provincial land, so that is the main reason [for the delay],” Kwiatkowski said. “You think about East Juniper, that went fairly quickly but we were all on city land and we had it go through [a gravel] pit which is private, so we worked out an agreement there.”
“The other ones, either there were agreements already in place or its just simpler, but this is provincial land, and it will be permanent, so yeah, there is more work required.”
Work on this permanent route – which had been identified back in 2007 – as well as the other emergency exits began after the Canada Day fire of 2021. While the fire did not destroy any properties, a number of Juniper residents who were trying to flee were trapped in their vehicles on Highland Road due to a lack of available escape routes.
“We had our fingers crossed [for a 2025 opening] but it just didn’t happen as quick as we were hoping,” Kwiatkowski said. “The hope would be to get the field work done this spring or summer, and then probably get on to more of the detailed design come fall and winter.”
“Not looking at any start date this year then as we’d look into 2025 and then hopefully have the project done by 2026.”
It is not clear how much the new permanent route will cost, but Kwiatkowski said the City will be splitting some of it with the developers of the Juniper West neighbourhood.
“We’ll have to fine tune the estimate once we have some of the field work done and we fine tune the design,” he said. “The plan was the work going through the provincial land is paid for by the city, and the portion through the private land would be paid for by the developer.”
A map showing exists from the Juniper Ridge subdivision of Kamloops. (Photo via City of Kamloops)
Kwiatkowski says the City of Kamloops is also working on other access routes in neighbourhoods like Pineview.
“The road to the new elementary school is going to get built, but we did have money in the budget for a gravel road to connect to Aberdeen up Pacific Way to Highway 5A,” Kwiatkowski said.
“We’re working on permits with the province on that but yeah, in time the road would get fully paved through development.”
