Snow fall warnings, Bank of Canada drops interest rates, and more Cedars homes have sold!
There is no better time to come and visit the Cedars.
If you have dreamed of owning a home at one of the top ski resorts in North America now is your time to make it happen. Book a visit and make a deal, you never know unless you try! Homes starting at $1,499,000 and only two left for this spring completion.
Buyers Guide and Interior Design Package links are below.
Here are just a few of the reasons to buy.
• at the base of Kicking Horse Mountain with downhill and cross country accessible out your door. ‘If you live here, you could have another beer’!
• Short term rental ready, lots of owner lock off storage.
• energy performance beyond Passive House and BC Step Code level 5.
• European tilt and turn triple pane windows.
• Double walls with double the insulation in the roof.
• Expansive decks with views like this photo below from Cedars 20 living room.
• Central Air – HEATING and COOLING from Heat Pumps
• Professionally designed interiors by Maison Kara.
• Quartz counters.
• Induction top stoves.
• Heated tile floors.
• Custom built ins for your mud room, pantry, closets and storage areas.
• Barrier free shower with glass walls and 4′ wide recessed shampoo niche.
• Bunk bed options, queen on the bottom, twin XL on top.
• Climate resilient exterior finishes.
• Paved driveways, covered outdoor parking area and entry.
• Fast charging EV rough ins.
• Hot tub ready with junction box to the deck and hot tub filler on the decks.
• and so much more, this is just the beginning!
Only two homes left for this spring move in!
Click on the links below for our Interior Design Package and Buyers Guide.
Cedars Interior Design Package
Call or email to book your tour today;
Ned | njohnson@innovationbuilding.com | 250-344-8530
- Published in Real Estate
Kicking Horse Living Offers a Different Pace of Life
As our gondola cabin flies past the third tower, the Columbia Valley comes into focus to the south. North America’s second-longest river winds along banks already turning green in the spring sun while a bounty of late-season powder awaits in the alpine. It looks like a fantasy landscape. “This is why we live here,” a spry fellow in his 50s says, shooting me a knowing wink. He gets it: there’s no competition here, no glitz, no glam. It’s just us and the mountains—an unvarnished, direct relationship. There are few places like it, and fewer you can call home.
Now brimming with self-confidence at 25 years old, Kicking Horse Mountain Resort knows exactly what it is—one of the last holdouts of authentic mountain living in the frenzied world of resort developments. Sat in the Purcell Mountains’ Dogtooth Range above the blue-collar town of Golden, Kicking Horse is a confluence of giant landscapes and simple values. It’s a tight-knit community of homeowners and Golden locals whose priorities are exactly the same: unfiltered mountain life in the largest setting possible, with as few distractions as possible. Think Whistler or Jackson if no one was there, and you’d start to get the picture, but still miss some of the nuance.
There’s 1,315 metres (4,314 feet) of vertical drop spanning ski terrain that’s rowdy enough to host a
Freeride World Tour event, or mellow enough to baby sit the kids. All of it funnelling back to a single base area that feels like a family ski hill, and all of it at elevations resilient enough to deliver over 6.5 metres of dry, consistent snow every winter. A small village with restaurants, cafes, pubs, and shops keeps the vibe centralized, making it easy to find your friends and neighbours. Some of whom might be just as entranced by the perfect pitch of the Dawn Mountain Nordic area only a hop away.
Come summer there’s a raucous downhill bike park to keep the energy going, or the Moonrakers cross-country mountain bike network, where you can flow endlessly through untrammelled forests of cedar, spruce, and pine that orbit the year-round resort. You can likewise spend long, warm days hiking or running the lofty alpine trails via gondola, or go it with human power alone. Whatever you choose, you’ll be in good company—but no too much company. And that’s the point. When you have the biggest outdoor recreation in North America at your doorstep and a decidedly small cadre of like-minded souls to share it with, you don’t need much else. And that’s the way we like it.
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Construction is well underway for the final phase of The Cedars development and sales have already started! This first release of homes will be on lots 19, 20, 21 and 22 and will be ready by Spring 2025.
4 Bedrooms / 3 bathrooms – 2594 luxurious square feet – Starting at $1,499,000
At The Cedars, healthy mountain living is a priority, offering clean air, pristine water, and a vibrant lifestyle. Commitment to High Performance goes beyond energy efficiency – it’s about enhancing your comfort. All Season Comfort, Climate-Resilient, All-Electric, Net Zero Energy Ready homes.
See the Buyers Guide for more information.
Contact Ned Johnson directly, njohnson@innovationbuilding.com, for all the details on the straight forward ‘Developer, direct to Purchaser’ sales process.
- Published in Real Estate, Real Estate, Summer, Winter
The Cedars at Kicking Horse – The Final Phase
Sales launch June 20th!
We are excited to share that construction has started for the Final Phase of the Cedars. Sales will start Thursday June 20th, 2024!! This first release of homes will be on lots 19, 20, 21 and 22.
Contact Ned Johnson directly, njohnson@innovationbuilding.com, for all the details on the straight forward ‘Developer, direct to Purchaser’ sales process.
Your home will be ready next Spring. Joining the amazing Cedars community will be a breeze!
See the foundation for homes 21 and 22 shown here. We are pouring concrete for footings today!!
View from the deck of Cedars 21_22.
Where Mountain Modern meets High Performance
4 Bedrooms / 3 bathrooms – 2594 luxurious square feet – Starting at $1,499,000
At The Cedars, we prioritize healthy mountain living, offering clean air, pristine water, and a vibrant lifestyle. Our commitment to High Performance goes beyond energy efficiency – it’s about enhancing your comfort. All Season Comfort, Climate-Resilient, All-Electric, Net Zero Energy Ready homes.
- Experience double wall insulation, draft-free interiors, consistent heating and cooling year-round.
- Breathe Easy with 24/7 fresh, filtered outdoor air and abundant natural light from our passive house certified windows.
- Fresh interiors, light and bright.
- 9-foot ceilings on the first floor and 10-foot ceilings on the second floor.
- Private paved driveway, with more covered parking outside.
- Rough in ready for Fast Charging EV station.
- Rough in ready for hot tub.
- And we haven’t forgotten the luxury part, see our Buyers Guide (in the link above) to learn more about all the fine finishes.
Rest Assured knowing you’re purchasing directly from the builder-developer, ensuring a seamless experience. We deliver on our promises.
Don’t miss out on your last chance to be a part of the Cedars community.
Stay tuned for regular updates and talk to you soon,
Ned
#CedarsatKickingHorse #kickinghorsemtn #champagnepowder
- Published in Real Estate, Summer, Winter
Innovation in Action: Third Phase of Kicking Horse Cedars Neighbourhood Goes “Mountain Modern”
Ned and Rachelle Johnson’s move from Whistler to the BC Rockies and Kicking Horse Mountain Resort came from the desire to “live in a real working person’s town.” From 1992 to 2005, Johnson worked side by side with Rod Nadeau at Georgie-Award-winning Innovation Building Group, creating some of Whistler’s most iconic residences.
In 2005, Nadeau and Johnson purchased a lot at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, a sprawling, magnificent canvas of skiing terrain just outside of Golden, British Columbia, He cut a deal with Rod Nadeau, his business partner in Whistler, to bring on some projects at the diamond in the rough resort, and oversaw the design, construction and completion of the Palliser Lodge, a 48-unit condo hotel located in Kicking Horse’s central plaza.
“We’ve been here for 19 years, and we absolutely love it. Rod and his team still manage projects in Whistler, Pemberton and the Sunshine Coast and there has been plenty to keep me busy around here.”
Innovation’s current project is Phase Three of The Cedars; a bare-land strata project that backs onto the Dawn Mountain Nordic Trails. Phase one and phase two featured similar lots and were sold before the pandemic.
It was just the breather that Johnson needed to re-think what a truly revolutionary mountain home concept might look like.
Johnson explains: “Coming out of the pandemic, labour and material costs are up 30 to 40 percent.
Financing and insurance are up too. It would seem natural to “dumb down” our designs, but we won’t. We’re going remain true to our company philosophy and build carbon-neutral, climate-resilient, high-performance homes and have proud new homeowners living in homes with efficiency standards that will not be law until 2032.”
Johnson canvassed as many Kicking Horse homeowners as he could; not just in The Cedars but in other developments, to find out what they loved about their homes, and what they would change. Combined with his own experience in building a variety of innovative projects—including the newly-completed award-winning Oso in downtown Golden—Johnson created the concept of “Mountain Modern” Duplex homes to make up Phase 3. “There has to be an aesthetic that strikes a balance between space-wasting and energy-wasting 12,000 square foot Western gothic cabins on steroids and tiny, almost windowless Passive Houses.”
“When we talk about building a high-performance house, most people think that it’s going to involve a lot of up-front costs that will save money down the road. At Innovation, we’ve been in the game long enough to learn from our mistakes and know what works and what doesn’t. Building high-performance does not have to cost more and it will save you money from the beginning. Investing in more insulation, great windows, a well-sealed envelope with fresh conditioned air, and your mechanical systems can be smaller while occupier comfort increases. Right out of the gate, your energy consumption is less. We can truly build better homes that are more energy efficient without breaking the bank. High-performance homes are simply a better way to live.”
He continues: “The cost savings are in the efficiencies. It’s not one piece of technology like a heat pump or a solar panel, it’s an entirely organic, interdependent system. These are homes that maintain the 
decorative touches that homeowners love, such as timber beams. Many people think a high-performance home uses very little energy, and while that’s true, the most tangible benefit is in providing mountain-high air quality, even temperature control, and warm, diffuse natural interior light without any harshness in cold winters and hot summers. The system is designed so that tradespeople can come in and easily act upon the technical drawings and specifications. Service cavities make it easy for electricians to come in and staple wires to the inside of the wall. We source triple-pane, argon gas windows from Poland that have twice the insulative value that the best windows in North America can provide. You literally can hold your hand up to the glass on the coldest day of the year and it will feel warm to the touch.”
Since the 1950s, “flat roofs” have long been a distinguishing design feature of modern homes. These Mountain Modern homes will are designed with gently sloping roofs that are designed to prevent “ice damming” which occurs when warm air escaping from the roof melts and freezes into a layer of ice. Come springtime, melting water from the roof pools behind this ice dam can compromise the home’s entire structure. Each home has enough load-bearing capacity to hold an entire winter’s worth of snowfall accumulation.
Johnson concludes: “Clean lines translate into building well-insulated, air-tight homes. We do not want to make vanilla boxes, either. We emphasize using climate-resilient materials, which means that you may use synthetic compounds in highly-exposed areas like sundecks. Electric fireplaces and engineered wood floors are more energy-efficient and cost-effective than natural materials. Most of the people who own second homes up here don’t want to be spending their time maintaining their investment.”
Details:
The Cedars, Phase III will be selling and commence construction this summer, with a planned completion date of Fall, 2025. Sign up on Kicking Horse Mountain’s website under Real Estate/Cedars and you will receive the Buyers Guide with the most up-to-date information on sale prices and sales dates.
- Published in Real Estate, Summer, Winter
