Housing

Construction Begins at Rainbow Ridge

After years of anticipation,  construction has finally begun on the Rainbow Ridge affordable housing project in downtown Mansons Landing. 

“We had an open house a couple of weeks ago, and we had a lot of back and forth with the seniors village next door. We made some considerable changes to our plans based on their input. Then  Monday, we started clearing the land in preparation for phase 1 of our project,”  explained Sadhu Johnston,  Executive Director of the Cortes Housing Society. 

“Phase 1 is to clear the land and build the infrastructure that we need, which is the water and the sewer and get electric in and build a community building. That will be our first structure on the land,  and then we hope  to build seven townhomes later this year. We’re going to be needing to raise the money for the townhomes, but we’ve got the first chunk of money set aside for getting all the infrastructure ready to go.” 

Cortes Currents: How big of an area are you clearing?  

Sadhu Johnston: “It’s about three acres,  and it was a natural clearing in the middle of the site. So some of that is already cleared, but we still have to  remove stumps and prepare the land.  Then we will be planting wildflowers and kind of creating a meadow for the  parts of the site that we won’t be building on immediately.” 

“It’s not going to be one big flat site,  like a parking lot or anything. It’ll be contoured to support and recognize the natural shape of the land. We will be creating some berms with some of the stumps. and some of the stumps will be used at the school for the wetland project that they’re going to be building.”

Cortes Currents: What is a berm? 

Sadhu Johnston: “Berm: a pile which creates a visual barrier, a sound barrier and creates habitat for wildlife, put the stumps up in a row.” 

Cortes Currents: And it stays like that? 

Sadhu Johnston: “It Breaks down over time, but it’s pretty common way to deal with stumps.  We’re trying to avoid the burning as much as we can and by piling them up, you create little nooks and crannies for wildlife.

“Our first, actual construction will be our community building, which will server as a hub for our utility,  the pump house and the electrical shed and we will be building  some offices for the housing society and a facility we’re calling the waterworks. We’ll have some laundry facilities , showers and bathtubs  and a little community room there.  That’ll be in partnership with the Women’s Center and to support people who  are living on Cortes that don’t have access to indoor plumbing and laundry facilities. So it won’t be a public laundry facility.”

“It’ll be more of a service for folks that are living on Cortes that don’t have access to that now.”  

Cortes Currents: Do you have a tentative date for when constriction is going to start?  

Sadhu Johnston: “The construction of the utility building, hopefully in around April.”  

Cortes Currents: Do you have a tentative date for when it will be finished? 

Sadhu Johnston: “Some of those things depend a little bit on BC Hydro and some other factors, but that’s probably a three or four month project, something like that.”  

“We’re obviously very excited to be moving forward and have a lot of work ahead of us.” 

Links of Interest:

All photos courtesy Cortes Housing Society

Sign-up for Cortes Currents email-out:

To receive an emailed catalogue of articles on Cortes Currents, send a (blank) email to subscribe to your desired frequency: