Boutin Avenue Development

The Town of Hinton is working on an affordable housing development on Town-owned land at the intersection of Boutin Avenue and Drinnan Way. The project will see a number of modular affordable homes developed and operated by Town of Hinton in partnership with a housing management body.

The Town of Hinton has been exploring development opportunities for the undeveloped, Town-owned lands at the intersection of Boutin Ave and Drinnan Way since 2018.

In July 2020, a design team from V3 and ncx+ conducted the Boutin Avenue design charrette at Government Centre. The Boutin Avenue design charrette was an intensive collaborative engagement process that saw the project go from a vision stage to a final preferred concept design over a four-day period.

This dynamic process brought different stakeholder groups to the table to discuss their needs and vision for the site. The design team took this information and created a series of site plans that captured the different visions. 

After the four days, the intent was to have a preferred concept design that has the support from those who participated. The process involved stakeholders and the public participating in three sessions during the four days to achieve validation of the preferred design. 

During the design charrette, the objectives of the project were identified as:

1. Best utilization of Town-owned land
2. Diversification of Hinton’s housing inventory
3. Development that is conscious of and complementary to existing development
4. Housing that is both financially attainable and sustainable

The preferred design was identified as:

In November 2020, Council directed Administration to pursue a Collaborative Partnership approach in the development of the Boutin Avenue lands with other organizations and developers and collaboratively seek other sources of grant funding to provide affordable housing through a phased approach. 

In December 2020, the Town of Hinton applied to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) for the Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) grant with assistance from Colliers who have expertise in the field of Housing Project Management associated with CMHC. The Rapid Housing Initiative (RHI) provides funding to expedite the delivery of affordable housing units  to people and populations targeted under the National Housing Strategy (NHS). 

In December 2021, CMHC awarded the Town of Hinton $2,258,000 from the RHI grant for the construction of affordable housing units. This grant will pay for Phase I of the project.  

The Town was challenged to find a design/build contractor that would undertake tight timelines to deliver a minimum of 25% occupancy of the homes by Oct. 31, 2022, a deadline set by CMHC.  In June 2022, Noble Offsite Ltd. was awarded the design/build contract to build ten affordable housing units for Phase I of the Boutin Ave Affordable Housing Development. The ten affordable units will be built in two complexes, averaging 560 sqft to 790 sqft, with a mixture of single bedroom units, two-bedroom units and single bedroom accessible units. The anticipated completion timeline for this phase is Q1 2023. The Town of Hinton is collaborating with Evergreens Foundation to determine the best demographic for these units based on what the community needs.   The McElhanney engineering team was also employed to support the Town in upgrading the infrastructure to cater to the ten affordable housing units.

 In October 2022, the Town established water line locations and sanitary networks, with the support of Wilf Landscaping. Noble Offsite Ltd. installed pilings for the first group of five homes the first two modular homes were delivered on Monday, October 24.

Further updates on this exciting project will be provided as they become available.