Newsletters ─── March 18, 2026
Prime Connection: March 2026
Author: Berry Architecture + Associates
New Project: City of Cranbrook Child Care Centre
A new Child Care Centre in Cranbrook, BC is now in design! This centre is a stand-alone building that will be used for infants and toddlers up to the age of 5, with separated program areas for 0 to 3 years of age and 3 to 5 years of age. The ages 0-3 program includes an activity area, nap room, washrooms, storage area, and shared kitchen space. The ages 3-5 program area includes an activity area, multi-purpose room, washrooms, and shared kitchen space. Each program space has an appropriately-sized enclosed outdoor play area. The Child Care Centre will also house administration spaces with two offices, washrooms, a staff room, various storage areas, laundry room, recycling room, mechanical room, and sensory room. The interior will provide an inviting, functional, and safe environment for the children and will foster connection to the outdoors with large windows and daylight transmittance into the corridor through the use of clerestory dormers. The building is intended to be constructed using mass-timber structural elements..
Facility Evaluations-Alberta and BC
Our Facility Evaluation teams have been very busy since January. This aspect of our work is very important for our clients and often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. It is key for clients who manage multiple facilities to keep up with the condition of their buildings so they can plan and budget for repairs, upgrades, and replacements. Our team in Alberta—Angela, Sarah, Tracey E., and Gord—have reviewed facilities all over the province—including schools, universities, colleges, hospitals, health centres, provincial buildings, and assisted living facilities. Our BC team—Dustin, Noemie, and Saeed—have reviewed a wide range of municipal buildings in Cranbrook, including arenas, swimming pool, curling rink, theatre, library, fire hall, seniors’ centre, public works buildings, city hall, and many more. A few fun facts: since the beginning of the year, the Cranbrook team has reviewed 49,749 m2 (535,494 ft2) and averaged approximately 13,000 steps a day, and the Alberta team has reviewed 287,129 m2 (3,090,630 ft2), with an average of 15,000 steps per day.
Project Update: Orion Multi-Housing
Construction is now underway on a new multi-family housing development in Comox, BC. The project will be comprised of three buildings of four storeys each, with a total of 199 units—made up of 63 bachelor suites, 48 one-bedroom, and 88 two-bedroom units. Of the two-bedroom units, 24 are adaptable to be accessible/barrier-free. There is shared underground parking under each building. Amenity spaces will include a community building, community garden, and dog run. This is another multi-family project in Highstreet Ventures’ portfolio, providing vital housing stock for Comox and area.
The current construction is foundation work, suspended slab of a shared parkade, which is expected to be completed this month. Work will then be focused on the South residential building, with framing to begin next month. Thank you to the Highstreet construction team for the aerial photos of the work so far.
Here are some things we’ve been up to:
This year’s Coldest Night of the Year walk took place on February 28th. This annual fundraiser is in aid of the Red Deer Food Bank and the Mustard Seed. Our walkers this year were Ray, Adeline, and Kirsten. We were small but mighty and raised over $1,000.
On March 9th, George and Avery attended the 2026 Annual Mayor’s Luncheon, State of the City Address, sponsored by the Red Deer District Chamber, BILD Central Alberta, and the RDCA. This was a good opportunity to keep up with City of Red Deer affairs and check in with other construction industry professionals.
On March 12th, the Architectural Technologists Student Association at SAIT held an “Industry Night” for students. Berry Architecture had an information booth at the event staffed by some of our SAIT grads, Tracey E., Kurtis, and Brody, plus our Marketing Coordinator, Avery. We were busy all evening chatting with students and reconnecting with former instructors.
Noemie attended the Grand Opening of the Key City Theatre Elevator project in Cranbrook on March 12th. This was a lovely evening with delicious food, open bar, live entertainment, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. We received many compliments on how well-integrated the new elevator was.
Did you know?
Seventy per cent of a building’s sustainability outcome is decided during design. In addition, early design choices alone can reduce embodied carbon by more than 30%. This is why we're adding carbon modelling to our building design process—to minimize the impact and increase the resilience of our buildings from the get-go.
Source:
Progressive prediction of embodied carbon emissions across stages of schematic design with machine learning