Dreami n g i n CustomColour Custom home and renovations business built around what today’s homeowners really want: personal customizations, high-quality materials and hands-on customer service. + WORDS BY LISA MANFIELD + PHOTOS BY OLIVER RATHONYI-REUSZ
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t’s not every day you hear about a developer pushing for fewer units in a multi-family complex. But that was exactly the vision Camilla Brown and Rick Schmohl had for Eleven on Cross, a new townhome complex in Balsam Creek, Maple Ridge, designed and developed by the couple through their West Coast Dream Homes Ltd. company.
The 11 townhomes are highly customizable so owners can tailor them to their tastes. “We’ve allowed people to change floor plans and rooms, in addition to choosing their finishes,” Brown says. “Everything in the complex is high-end. It’s one of the things we’ve been known for … we’re a quality, high-end, design-build
“We had to justify why we wanted lower density than what the professionals were suggesting the city wanted,” Brown says. “But we wanted to make sure we were able to create something that was a unique high-end townhouse.”
custom builder.” Brown’s vision for Eleven on Cross has been in the making since she spotted the lot eight years ago. “We did a build in that area and beside
The customizable luxury townhomes cater to downsizers looking to maintain their quality of life on a smaller scale. “People come from beautiful homes to downsize but can’t find anything similar to downsize into,” Brown says. The new gated community, which opens to residents this summer, changes that. 14
SPRING 2020
the house was a beautiful greenbelt — just over an acre of land,” she says. “It took some years before the land went to market, then we jumped on it and tried to recreate it into a downsizer lifestyle property. We’d been doing smaller developments throughout Maple Ridge — turning one piece of property into two — but this was a bigger piece to bite off.”