Another councillor seeks carriage-house OK
A second laneway home-related application from a city councillor should turn up on council’s agenda in the coming weeks.
Coun. Donovan Cavers confirmed to KTW he also has plans to build a carriage suite.
The first carriage home application by a city councillor has been approved.
At a public hearing on Sept.11, council agreed to a rezoning application for Coun. Marg Spina and her husband, Ross, which would allow them to build a carriage home at their Fraser Street property.
Ross said the home is being built for the Spinas’ special-needs son.
“The appeal of that is there’s still an amount of independence having a carriage house versus living in a larger home, in the same home,” he said.
Originally, the family had planned to build an addition on their home, he said.
Earlier this year an article on a group of local businesspeople who had come together to build and design carriage homes caught his eye.
He connected with the group, Laneways4Kamloops, and was told the lot was a good fit for a carriage house.
“In their view it was really an ideal lot for it because of the elevation difference between the front of our house and the laneway,” he said.
“The carriage house fits quite nicely into the hillside without it being very intrusive to the neighbours in terms of what it looks like.”
While Ross said their are specific criteria for the homes that won’t make them practical for everyone — lot size, for instance, can be a dealbreaker
— others in the city might find them appealing for a number of reasons.
“Say you have some elderly parents that need support, and you have the lot and the area,” he said.
“It might be kind of a shift to semi-independence. That might be worthwhile.”
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