New six-plex goes up in Moosomin

January 27, 2025, 2:44 pm
Kara Kinna


One of the units in the six-plex being lifted into place on Thursday.
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A new, six-unit apartment building went up in Moosomin on Thursday along Broadway Avenue right across for the new Borderland Co-op food store.

The modular apartment was built in six separate units with each unit being lifted into place with a crane and bolted together.

“We build in a factory, so everything is built in a controlled climate. We ship it out, completely finished, and then we crane it on site,” says Paul Zacharias with Dream Concepts out of Neepawa, Manitoba who constructed the building. “All of the hookups are down on service shafts within the apartments. It’s cheaper because we don’t have hotel costs, so everybody comes to our job site day-in day-out and they never have to live in a hotel, so we don’t have live out expenses. So on average, compared to the market, we are cutting our price per square foot by $30-$50 by building it on site.

“We build it with energy efficiency in mind, so we actually spray foam all of our products, our floors, our walls, our roofs. We are cutting down the thermal transfer, so you’re going to have a more energy efficient product when you’re done.”

He says the building took three months to complete.

“Three months from the day we started our first guy. Our factory works in stages, so for the first month we only had one or two people working on it because we had other projects ahead of it. By the time November 27 rolled around, then we had four to five people working on it, and then come today, we’re here.

“We just launched our company last year, so this is our inaugural year actually, so we’re brand new. We’ve built seven houses and a six-plex. The seven houses were all 1,200 square-foot-houses. They’ve all been going to Saskatchewan, every single one. We’ve been in Lanigan, Saskatchewan, which is where six of our homes have gone to, and then Moosomin. We have one at Katepwa Lake too.”

Zacharias says it was exciting seeing their first apartment building going up.

“It’s the first time so it’s great, its actually (owner) Jay Hamilton’s design and he was very thorough with all of the details, so it has gone very well. He’s done a good job and it’s worked well.”

Jay Hamilton was on site watching the new apartment building go up Thursday.
“I’m very, very excited to see this come together,” he said. “It has been a long time in the making, and for it to finally be here, it’s a little bit surreal actually.

“We’ll have the units ready to go for March 1. We’ll have tenants moving in. We’ll see if everything goes well and we’ll maybe have some early move ins. We’ll let people come maybe a week or two early. It’s largely dependant on our electrical service, Saskpower.”
Hamilton says he’d consider putting up more buildings like the modular apartment in Moosomin.

“We would definitely look to build more. We might look to maybe do some other centres in the interim but when we see the demand back here, we’d definitely be interested to do more. Probably with the next one we might look at doing possibly a mix of one and two bedrooms. This is just a little niche we kind of identified. This market is a need right now, but I think in the future, a nice mixture of one and two bedrooms would be nice to see.

“This one is targeted at midterm renters, working professionals that are looking for a place, and contract workers. We’re trying to bridge the gap in between a hotel stay, and a long-term rental house or something like that. Most of those people are staying for around six months to one year, and primarily they’re working at the mine, or in healthcare.”

Hamilton says five of the six units have been filled. “Which is pretty cool that we’ve had that much interest this far in advance, because it’s hard to lease something to someone with nothing being here, nobody seeing it. But we have had lots of interest, and I’m sure now that they’re actually here, we’ll get a lot more.”

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