A longtime “labour of love” is starting to take shape in the northeast corner of the city. Housing construction has begun at the NiMA Trails subdivision along Shakespeare Drive, in the area of Eramosa Road and Speedvale Avenue.
“It’s very exciting,” said Andrew Lambden, founder and CEO of Terra View Homes, which is behind the 330-plus unit, net zero-ready project. “It’s been 15 years in the making.”
The subdivision will be a mix of single and semi-detached homes, as well as condominium apartment units.
“It’s much-needed in the city,” Lambden said. “It’s trying to hit the affordability of people.”
The NiMA Trails project has been slowed by several factors. Among them, Lambden explained, are supply and labour issues related to the pandemic, the need to create a lift station to allow for a gravity-fed sanitary system connection and changes to the building code that require staircase steps to be deeper as of Jan. 1, adding to the space needed, as well as other technical matters.
“All things told, we’re quite pleased with the progress,” said Lambden. “It’s all greened up now and the community has started to use the trails, which is awesome.
“We’ve got a lot of trees planted,” he added. “We had the foresight to plant trees many years ago, so the tree stock we’re using is quite large, which is really nice.”
On Sunday, the first foundation was dug for a model home.
“We’re quite pleased with that,” said Lambden. “We see it proceeding at a good pace from here on through.”
Homes throughout the subdivision will be built as “net zero ready,” which means there wouldn’t be a great deal of work required to make them truly net-zero homes, the developer noted.
“It’s truly a holistic approach to land development,” said Lambden, adding, “It’s a very, very tight building envelope with very low consumption.”
The prospect of geothermal heating/cooling systems is also being considered, said Lambden.
“These things do take time to implement. We’re in the process of bringing that forward.” “It certainly is a fascinating concept to be able to reduce our footprint by that much.”
With those delays now in the rearview mirror, Lambden said efforts to sell homes in the subdivision will move forward, with residents expected to start moving in next year.
