Renderings of one of the projects planned for Calabogie Peaks west of Ottawa.Calabogie Peaks
A little over an hour west of Ottawa on the shores of Lake Calabogie, the owners of the local a ski hill have launched the first phase of an ambitious plan to build more than 400 new homes.
After a couple of turbulent years in the recreational property market the proposal by Calabogie Peaks to redevelop 700 acres on the mountain it owns into a master-planned community of six distinct neighbourhoods could face an uphill hike, but taking the time to get things right is a hallmark of the ownership group.
Calabogie Peaks president Paul Murphy’s family has been cottaging in the Calabogie area since the 1940s. In 1982, he was working on Wall Street in New York when his father, Harold Murphy, called to let him know he was buying the local ski hill.
“Whoah, what are you thinking?” said Mr. Murphy. At the time the Peaks was a pretty basic local hill, it had T-bar lifts and some amenities, but his father – a Toronto-area lawyer – had a vision of a four-season destination for the 1,500-acre site. Despite his initial misgivings, Mr. Murphy co-invested over the years as Calabogie enhanced its 45-acre waterfront, added buildings and amenities, chair lifts and resort infrastructure. He and two siblings eventually bought the site from his father in 2006, and Paul began to take more of a daily management role after he left Wall Street in 2009, shortly before his father’s death in 2011.
Adding residential real estate on the site was something he discussed with his father, but it wasn’t until 2015 that he started to start planning intensively. Almost 10 years later he finally has all the pieces in place to start realizing the dreams the senior Murphy had for the mountain when he bought it four decades ago.
“It’s a little emotional,” said Mr. Murphy, “I wanted to see that vision through you might say.”
Giannone Petricone Associates designed the modernist mix of townhouses and stacked townhouses that will feature 97 units in the first phase of residential real estate at the site, called Juniper Ridge.Calabogie Peaks
The first phase, called Juniper Ridge, will be a ski-in and ski-out access community built about 200 feet above the resort’s “village” at the base of the hill. Giannone Petricone Associates designed the modernist mix of townhouses and stacked townhouses that will feature 97 units (about a third are for sale now) with floor plan options that range from a one-bedroom, 650-square-foot apartment style unit for $569,000 to a three-bed, 1,425-square-foot townhouse for $899,000.
Experts say that with high costs of construction and high interest rates for borrowers, it’s a difficult time to sell new-build homes generally, much less in the recreational market.
“Some of it is mirroring where we are in the market in general, and still a little bit of sit and wait,” said Jasmine Cracknell-Young, a vice-president with real estate analysts Zonda Urban.
Recently, the pricing in the tiny township of Greater Madawaska – the area that includes Calabogie Lake with just about 2,500 residents – followed the boom-bust of pandemic-area cottage country across Ontario.
“We saw huge increases in 2022, in terms of sales and sale price, in 2023, we saw the average number round off to where it was in 2021 … and it’s been a little bit slower to start this year for sure,” said Jessica Fay, a broker with Royal LePage Team Realty and a lifelong Calabogie resident.
According to data from the local Renfrew County Real Estate Board the median price in the area spiked to $700,000 in 2022, before falling back to below $500,000 in 2024.
“It’s been hard to find buyers over $500,000 for the last six months to a year,” said Vincent Johnston, a salesperson with Century21 Eady Realty, who said even lakefront property has become a difficult sell. “There’s been no waterfront sales on Calabogie Lake; well, there’s one that sold for $1.2-million, but they started at $2-million a year ago. It took a big drop to get that done. I’ve got one on the waterfront; it’s $785,000 … I can’t get people to see it!”
Calabogie Peaks’s communities could be priced on the higher end of the local market, though the units are probably still two years away from delivery.
“You can’t forget how emotional a purchase of real estate can be,” said Ms. Cracknell-Young. “When it is the secondary home market, it’s a lot different than a traditional home purchase. Those buyers are always there: they want to spend their weekends cottaging, that doesn’t go away.”
Functionally, the Peaks will have the best internet in the region with fibre-to-the-home delivered by the resort’s homegrown internet service.Calabogie Peaks
Mr. Murphy has spent a lot of time and money getting Calabogie Peaks to this point, and despite the gyrations in the recreational market he’s betting on the appeal of his mountain. There’s no municipal services on the resort, so Mr. Murphy has had to lay the literal groundwork for his plans by building out its own on-site water, sewage and even telecommunications capacity to support the development. Functionally, the Peaks will have the best internet in the region with fibre-to-the-home delivered by the resort’s homegrown internet service.
“I haven’t been at this thing to squeeze every nickel out of it, my family has front-ended a huge investment the pride and joy will be the result,” said Mr. Murphy.
Future phases of the development may include a mountaintop village, a lakeside community and additional units in the resort’s village, where it tested the concept when it subdivided a boutique hotel and sold the suites as condo units in 2020.
Nevertheless, Mr. Murphy has a take-it-slow approach and won’t begin marketing those phases until they get the market feedback and Juniper Ridge is under way. The process could take a while, and he acknowledges that much like his father he may not live to see the culmination of this family vision.
“This could be 20 years of development plus,” he said. “I think it’s going to continue to evolve past my lifespan.”
Shane Dingman