Business Update: What’s Happening at Urban Thrive

It has been a busy few months.

Numerous landowners have expressed interest in partnering with us because, in one way or another, our vision and values resonate with them. In many cases, the ingredients aren't quite right for a viable project. Most commonly, the house on the property is worth too much to make a financially feasible project (we basically need tear-down houses to make it pencil). That said, some of these opportunities look really promising and we hope to make an announcement or two in the near future. Stay tuned!

Given the amount of interest in our work, I've found myself involved in various consultations at the local, provincial, and federal level, as well as with community groups and schools. As much as possible, I'm trying to focus on bringing our projects to the finish line, but I've made myself available to policymakers and community members who want to learn about our approach to housing development - these are important conversations to have.

Some of my more recent community conversations include the Movmi Neighbourhood Mobility Station white paper, the Community Social Planning Council webinars on Designing Cities for Families and Transforming Minimum Parking Requirements, as well as various unrecorded dialogues on "missing middle" housing.

On 2859 Richmond Road, Ryan and I have been working through the arduous process of getting a building permit from the District of Saanich (we have the zoning and a development permit, and now we need the building permit). I'll report our progress on the Community Page when we've got more details to share.

I've also been exploring new opportunities to further reduce our environmental footprint and lower our development costs, including: applying to CMHC's Housing Innovation Fund to help finance our projects and pass savings onto our home buyers; sustainable demolition options; and potential partnerships with vision-aligned builders. As we continue to explore these areas, we'll write about them on Catalyst and explain our decisions as we go. In doing so, we hope to highlight best practices for others in the industry and policymakers to consider in creating sustainable communities and homes.

That pretty much sums up the first quarter of the year - we'll see what the rest will bring!