LAKE KOOCANUSA GETAWAYS
Four-season recreational gem in southeastern B.C. has RV lots and home sites opening up
Tell someone you spent a glorious, sunny week at Lake Koocanusa and you might be met with a blank stare.
How the 145-kilometre long lake remains so relatively unknown is a head-scratcher. Hiding in plain sight among the Ponderosa pine forests and snow-capped Rockies of southeastern British Columbia, Lake Koocanusa is a shimmering body of deep, turquoise heaven. It was created in 1972 by the damming of the Kootenay River, and since it straddles the Canada/ United States border, its name is a mash-up of its geographical roots.
Lake Koocanusa is just three and a half hours southwest of Calgary, yet has never fully become a recreational mecca. With its strict zoning regulations, it appears as though the B.C. government would like to keep it that way. Just 10 per cent of Koocanusa's Canadian lakeshore is privately owned with most land zoned for agricultural use. The rest belongs to the Crown. There are only a handful of camping spots, RV parks and opportunities to build a cottage on this side of the 49th.
Alberta-based Memories RV Resorts owns and operates five recreational properties in Alberta and B.C. Its Lake Koocanusa holdings include the four-season Madera Ranch on the west side of the lake and Newcastle Sandy Shores, a May through September campground on the east side.
Fully serviced lots at Madera Ranch are 7,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet in size and start at $100,000.
The current phase is sold out, and Memories is hopeful the province will approve future zoning applications so they can develop more.
“There are always a handful of resale properties around,” says communications manager Dacy Zacharias.
Madera is an RV resort, however, followers of the tiny home movement can put what's known in the world of manufactured homes as a park model cabin on their lot. It's a CSA Z241 certified home built to a maximum of 531 square feet. The living space can be extended with a deck and sheds can be erected for storage, as long as both are movable.
“Nothing can be a permanent structure,” Zacharias says.
Koocanusa Village on the west side of the lake presents a rare opportunity to build a recreation property with a foundation. It's a titled cottage development about 40 minutes southwest of Fernie.
The 170-acre community has faced challenges and changed hands, several times, but was rescued in 2018 when it was purchased by KV Properties Inc., a group of local investors led by majority shareholder Reto Barrington. With a more experienced, sufficiently capitalized leadership team, KV has won back the trust of established owners and instilled confidence in buyers.
In 2020, Alan and Karina Agate of Fernie sold their vacation property in Las Vegas and purchased two lots in the Village. The couple, in their early 60s, have an acreage on the other side of the lake and will move when the first house is built. Their plan is to build a more permanent home on the other lot and rent out the first.
The attraction for the Agates was the marina and lake access.
“On the east side of the lake, there's almost no access to the water because it's all steep banks, so you have to travel with your boat. So, we thought, we'll have a smaller property with marina access and a boat slip,” says Alan.
He and Karina are building what he calls a carriage house, with a garage and 400-squarefoot mud room at ground level, a 1,200-square-foot main floor and a 600-square-foot loft. Knotty Pine Cabins of Edmonton will deliver the materials as a package and send a crew down for the fourweek build.
The typical “cottage” that buyers are building in the single-family home development is 2,500 square feet on a 65-foot to 85-foot-wide lot.
“We tell people to budget $300 per square foot for construction costs,” says Barrington, quickly calculating the price of a typical Koocanusa Village property to be $950,000, including the land.
Lot prices are $190,000 to $240,000, with 11 of the 246 developed and serviced lots available for purchase. There will be 508 lots at final build-out with the next release expected in spring 2022. Strata fees are $100 to $200 a year.
The Village marina has gas, groceries and 75 boat slips with expansion plans for more than 500, Barrington says. KV'S plans are to have a community centre, a firehall and a free-standing pub and restaurant. A 72-foot long “interior” lake — a centrepiece water feature surrounded by picnic shelters and pathways — is also on the Village vision board.
“There's a good buzz there now. Trees are being planted, grass is going in. So many who were just vacationing there are now living out there permanently. Once they got high speed internet out there, it changed the dynamic,” Alan says.