Michael Goodman is the founder of Tri City Group. His principles, vision, ideology about home building, and the way he does business are woven into the fabric of the company. Quality, style, and value are fundamental to every project developed by the Tri City, and customer satisfaction is essential.

Michael started building houses with his father Henry in mid-1960s. Henry was a master craftsman who could build the most intricate buildings which he learned how to do by doing. Henry built houses, commercial retail, and apartment buildings. In those days carpenters used to build much more parts of building than they do today. Master craftsmen used to build window casements, and kitchen cabinets for example. They learned the fine skills of custom carpentry. Henry did not like shoddy work, so he always insisted on doing this fine woodwork himself and overseeing all aspects of construction. In the Goodman household, there were always a workshop and cabinet-making tools along with all the equipment that was required to build a first-class home. Michael can remember being handed a paint brush at nine years old and being instructed on how prep a surface to achieve a first-class paint job.

Henry also had a tremendous passion for wooden boats. So, son like father, Michael developed a passion for wooden boats, their fine design, and special post and beam wood homes. There is nothing more complicated than wooden boat building and repair. As a result, Michael took all the woodshop and drafting courses he could throughout high school. Michael then worked his way through university working on the houses that his father was building through the family construction business. After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree, Michael joined the carpenter’s union and worked on one house project after another, ranging from building to renovations. During this period, Michael continued building and renovating sailboats and floating houses on his own, furthering his craftsmanship and his passion. Check out the love of his life here.

Michael’s passion for marine woodwork and floating homes eventually brought him to the purchase of waterfront property on which he could build a floating home marina. The marina had all the elements of a subdivision, including elevated wharves, servicing, and complicated floating docks. All the services ran in the docks, and they were heated so they would not freeze. He then proceeded to build two floating homes for himself on concrete barges. Michael often tells the story about one home that weighed 250,000 lbs. and was three stories high, which he built on the bank of the Fraser River. He then loaded all the furniture into the house and used a house-moving dolly to roll it down the bank and into the Fraser River. This was a clever plan which avoided moving all the furniture and house contents down a steep ramp and a long dock walk to where the house was eventually moored in the marina. You can see the blue and white house at Riversbend Floating Home Village on the main page of the website.

In the early 1980’s Michael started to purchase and renovate old apartment properties and houses from top to bottom. Between the mid-1980s and 2007, he renovated many houses, built the marina, renovated numerous apartment buildings before meeting Len Schellenberg in 1998. Len was an Okanagan builder who had been building houses, stores, and apartments since the early 1960s. Together, Michael and Len developed the Okanagan Breeze subdivision in Vernon located at 6450 Okanagan Landing Rd, Okanagan Landing, Vernon, BC. This development required full servicing and once that was done, Len build all sixty-seven homes. Please access the brochure by clicking here.

Driven by his sense of aesthetics from his fine arts training, Mike strives to provide a quality product. When Michael and his brother Dean, a well-known Toronto architect get together for a vacation they spend their time talking shop and traveling around looking at construction details in every interesting building they can find.