SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The official ground-breaking ceremony for the Cavo condominium project at Niven Lake took place this week.
Wayne Guy, president of Summit Circle Developments, shakes hands with Mayor Mark Heyck at the ground breaking ceremony for the company's Cavo condominium project on May 14. - Thandiwe Vela/NNSL photo
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Wayne Guy, president of Summit Circle Developments, the company bringing the modern lifestyle units to market, called the Tuesday event the beginning of a "healing" of the Niven Phase V land overlooking Back Bay—the site where the partially-built Bayview Estates development stood for several years.
"I think, being an architect, the landscape is just amazing around here and for many years this was just left quite an eyesore and it really looked like a scar. And what we see this project doing is really being the healing of the land," Guy said. "And restoring some of the integrity that the initial site had with its rolling bedrock down to the Back Bay."
The area was purchased by the city last year and split into five parcels of land for sale to developers.
The original Niven Phase V developer never got around to building on the lot where Summit is developing the 36 one-, two-, and three-bedroom condominiums, but some blasting had previously been done on the lot.
No materials are being used from the Bayview Estates development on the Cavo condiminiums, which will have an all new foundation poured after excavation is complete within the next four weeks, Guy said.
"We're saving some of the large boulders, making a boulder landscape that rolls down to Lemay (Drive)," he said.
Mayor Mark Heyck, who attended the May 14 ground-breaking ceremony, said a consistent supply of housing offerings will encourage population growth in the city.
Cavo and the high-end Waterfront Townhomes that are being developed on a Niven Phase V lot closest to the Bay, will return vibrancy and life to the land which sat dormant for five years after Edmonton-based Bond Street Properties went bankrupt before finishing its Bayview Estates condominium project, the mayor said.
"It's something that we at the city have been striving to see happen at phase five of Niven Lake for many, many years now. Certainly for the residents in the neighbourhood a blasted out area here that wasn't providing any vibrancy or life in the neighbourhood -- there was real desire to see some use put to this land," Heyck said.
He listed devolution, mineral resource development, Giant Mine remediation and a growing military presence among the things that he said will spur growth in Yellowknife and its increasing need for a variety of housing offerings.
Move-in dates for Cavo are scheduled for this summer.
