Hundreds of homes and 9 holes planned for Lorette

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This article was published 11/12/2013 (4541 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A nine-hole expansion to the Lorette Golf Course and joint housing development surrounding the course that would add a mix of hundreds of single-family and multi-family homes is being planned for the west edge of town.

Developers are ironing out the details with the local urban district (LUD) to get the nine-phase project approved. An update on the development’s progress is scheduled for Thursday at Taché council’s development and planning meeting.

David Grant, golf course architect and owner of Grant Golf, explained that if everything runs smoothly, permits are approved and the weather cooperates, golfers will be swinging their nine irons on the new holes by late summer 2015.

The golf course expansion is part of phase one of the development, which Grant hopes can start being built in the spring. Included in the first phase would be 64 single-family homes on the northeast side of the current golf course, and five acres beside Dawson Road with multi-family dwellings. Grant expects multi-family buildings to be a mix of townhouses and apartment-style condominiums. Apartments to be rented out are possible, depending on market demand. Single-family homes are expected to go up first.

A few requisite public reserves for green space would be included in the overall project that Grant said might take as long as 15 years, though he is optimistic that market demand will have all the phases completed years earlier. About 300 single-family houses are to be built when all is said and done.

More multi-family housing is planned, with most of it scheduled to be built as part of the final two phases of the project. Details on the size of the later multi-family structures—for example whether they are two or three storey—are still to be worked out with the municipality.

“We’re looking at adding them around the golf course. They are not mixed in with single-family,” stressed Grant.

With the exception of phase one’s five acres, all the planned multi-family construction is drawn up beside the links or the large retention ponds surrounding them. The idea behind the condos is to have a place to live for people who are looking to downsize after their children have flown the coop.