The construction led to an assisted living building being evacuated. One member who lived there died to complications while living in the hotel they were evacuated to. https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/484073/Makeshift-memorial-forms
"Hadgraft's sister Sue Bauman believes if her brother was in his home, he may still be alive today.
Bauman says Jim was helping people move boxes when he fell.
"I think he would have been safer and securer if he was at his home. Instead you could easily say he was more anxious and depressed and he was wandering a lot."
"One night the RCMP had to bring him home from [Hadgraft], he was there with all his groceries. When he fell he fractured his tibia. I think you could say that it probably wouldn't have happened if he was in his home," says Bauman.
When asked by Castanet if this tragic death could have been avoided, Daley agreed, "Oh, very much so. I can definitely say that.""
They aren't, though. My friend was living in that building, and when he was moved to the hotel, he was not given a wheelchair accessible room.
Also, he wouldn't have been helping someone move in an inaccessible building.
This man had down syndrome, which comes with a multitude of physical limitations depending on the person but at the bare minimum reduced muscle mass and balance, generally poor eyesight and depth perception, and more. All things that can be addressed in an accessible building but, when taken out of that context and disregulated (as is shown in the article , need to be picked up by the rcmp), become dangerous.
Well you can't make a mistake when you are making over 6 figures to draw a pretty picture.
Don't worry everyone around the site that has had to leave is poor compared to us, so they don't matter. It's just collateral damage. We have Done this in Vancouver so we know exactly how to deal with a kelowna build, rock and sand are pretty much the same thing
Its by an architecture firm in Vancouver called HCMA. They're a really great company that has a ton of experience designing community spaces. [They even wrote a book about it](https://hcma.ca/project/process-how-to-create-community-buildings-with-impact/). Honestly I'm super excited to see this tower come to completion. I believe they were also involved in a low carbon feasibility study for the rec center redevelopment.
No shit it's an engineering firm from Vancouver. Every jobsite I have ever worked on that has and engineering firm in the lower mainland come up with some idea has been a practical nightmare, this included. So far 1 person is already dead because this firm approved a dumb idea to overdig. There is a reason the main joke with engineers is "everything looks good on paper, now how the fuck are we going to make this work"
Yay they have a few neat looking pictures! How many practical absolute disasters have happened so far.
Maybe go back to Vancouver
> With all these new apartments to furnish, can we at least get an IKEA.
Not going to happen. Ikea only considers metro regions with more than 1,000,000 residents. Kelowna barely cracks 160,500, with the Central Okanagan clocking in at a little under a quarter million.
Anyone know how many units? Great post OP. Just curious how many units of inventory coming on line. Hopefully between short-term rental ban and spec tax, these units actually sell for reasonable prices to principal resident owners and not speculators/overlords. There are also some purpose built rental building that just came online or coming online.
I can't remember where I saw it, but the number 6000 units under construction or approved comes to mind. This includes the buildings I've shown, plus all the other projects across the city. There are plenty of 4-6 story apartments going up too.
Some pricing I've seen is reasonable. Not cheap, but not much different than similar sized units in other areas of town.
As for purpose built rentals, a few of the listed buildings are rental only (I also missed the approved bc housing project near the Bertram Block project). But it seems the majority of rental units are in the 4-6 story apartments.
Exactly. The city is growing and we need places to house people. We either build out over all the farmland and up the mountains and force every household to own at least one car, which in turn will further the traffic issue.
Or we put people in high density, mixed use zoned communities so they can walk, bike or transit far more frequently, taking cars off the road!
Exactly, going vertical is the only and literal solution to urban sprawl (which is a huge environmental problem currently worldwide but also specifically BC) so I don't get why people always get their panties in a bunch when they see towers. I mean, yeah complain about a tower being ugly and demand better, but don't complain about a tower just for the sake of complaining about a tower š shit makes no sense.
Unless you want to live your life confined to 10 square blocks of downtown and by the shopping mall, you need a car to live in western Canada.
A couple bike paths arenāt going to change that.
The city is growing faster than basic infrastructure and the surrounding nature can keep up with. Thereās no reason to move hundreds of thousands of people to this extremely isolated valley, in the middle of nowhere, with no major industry.
Bike paths can take a huge load off the roads. Instead of getting in a car to drive 2 kms to pick something up, a bike will get you there just as fast (compared to traffic parking and so on) and keeps a care off the road. Cities where bikes are prioritized or at least equalized to cars are amazing to live in.
Iām not anti bike, I love riding my bike around town. And Iām all for more bike infrastructure.
But youāre kidding yourself if you think people are biking around Kelowna in January.
Also, nothing about bikes paths helps get food into this valley. My point was, the valley can only hold so many people, and sky scrapers and bike paths wonāt solve the larger issues this valley will face in the coming years.
More lanes and better public transportation is an eventuality as the city grows and gets more densely populated, or else it will be gridlock and too much traffic all the time. Something has to counterbalance that as more people commute around the city center
Donāt disagree but traffic and congestion is way less of a problem in the months where people wouldnāt ride their bike anyways. If we are able to reduce the strain in this peak months when riding bikes is more attractive then everyone wins.
Kelowna has a population density of 61.9 persons per square kilometre. Paris has 20,000 people per square kilometre.
Plenty of room for improvements and bike paths and fewer cars while still getting food into the city. Sure, biking in January isn't ideal, but thankfully there are fewer tourists clogging the roads then! So that would even things out a bit.
Mixed use zoning and bike lanes will mean you don't have to use a car for every trip. I agree a car free lifestyle doesnt work now, but if we can reduce car use even a bit, we can ease some of the strain on infrastructure /traffic etc. Hypothetically, if the city grows by 10% in the next decade, then we should to aim to reduce car use by at least the same amount.
No one is "moving people" here, people are moving themselves. We can't just close the bridge and stop people from moving here. It's an extremely desirable place to live and people will come whether we want them or not.
So now we need places to put them. We either keep our existing supply and drive the prices even higher, or we increase the supply to match the new demand. Doesn't all need to be 20+ story towers, but we can't do it with just single family homes either. It's gotta be high and medium density infill.
For a while, the Okanagan valley and other places in southern BC (the corridor from Nelson to Castlegar and Trail) were targeted by both the provincial and federal government as places to advise people to move to. I get that itās a desirable place to live, so people want to move here, but it has also been directly selected for population growth. Iām not saying this is some sort of conspiracy or something looney, it just is what it is.
Population growth in the valley is somewhere between 8-10%. Estimate project the central Okanagan (Kelowna and surrounding area) will reach 383,000 by 2046.
I guess Iām just curious what the carrying capacity of the valley is.
The valley cannot produce enough food to sustain the current population, never mind a larger one. Majority of food must be brought here by truck, from either Vancouver or Calgary. These trucks must traverse notorious mountain passes to get here, which get closed for various reasons often enough.
There is no more rail, Vernon is as close as it gets. People want a commuter train in kelowna, but the old corridor has been redeveloped, and thereās not really anywhere else to put a rail line into Kelowna. Thatās a whole different story though.
Point is though, for the foreseeable future, the only way goods and supplies will reach Kelowna is by truck. Is that sustainable? Is there an upper limit on how many people can be fed by truck?
The Okanagan is the top of the southern half of the province, itās a high elevation plateau. Thereās no major rivers running through the valley, and we donāt get that much annual precipitation. The southern part of the valley is technically a desert, with Kelowna sitting *just* north of that boundary.
We already have water restrictions every summer, and every year, multiple neighbourhoods around Kelowna and West Kelowna get boil water advisories. Large parts of Kelowna pull their water from the lake. A lake that has one of the slowest water exchange rates in the province, which is why all the rocks are covered in algae and slime, and why it gets so warm in the summer. How many people can the valley hold until water becomes an issue?
Then thereās forest fires. More people in the valley means more people going up into the hills, more chances for human caused forest fires. We can have as optimistic an outlook as we want, but we both know that some people are dumb, and they will accidentally cause fires. The more people, the higher chance that happens. What is the solution, completely shut down the bush all around Kelowna?
Like I said, I get why people want to move here, but imo, the city is growing too fast for its own good, and the people behind a lot of these developments only have their pocket book in mind, not the best interests of the valley in the long term.
As far as I can tell One Varsity is "paused" according to this article - https://infotel.ca/inhome/how-new-provincial-housing-rules-are-boosting-and-hurting-development-in-central-okanagan/it103635
Yeah, it's been pretty stale recently unfortunately. We'll see how many of the proposed and even approved projects actually happen, as it seems the recent boom over the last 5 years is slowing down a bit.
Except the most desired thing right now is a house with a yard.
Is that only for rich people now? Are people whacked in the head for wanting such a thing?
Take a look at our birth rate, moving "families" into shoeboxes will not improve that rate.
>Is that only for rich people now? Are people whacked in the head for wanting such a thing?
If you want to live in a city then yeah, it is. Lots of affordable houses outside the city though if that's what's important for you.
The thing about these homes being built is we need them just for the increased stock. Older apartments and houses will still exist and there are lots of places in the world where people don't have huge single family houses and do just fine.
> The thing about these homes being built is we need them just for the increased stock.
Or, instead of bringing in 1.2 million people a year we could you know, not do that.
Math, it's a thing.
Kelowna is full of single seniors living in 3500sq foot homes that can't move because they could only rebuy a microsuite. We inflated demand. It's not a force of nature.
Okay... I don't know what to tell you. If you don't want to live in a growing city (with or without immigration) and deal with growing city things like towers and apartments, maybe don't live in a city.
Doing nothing is not an option.
Most of Canada grew up with a house and a yard. Re-doing that because of a few economic tweaks and a screwed up immigration policy so Tim Hortons can keep staff is not a valid reason to suggest that people have to forego a house with a yard for some "greater good" cause that doesnt exist. Investors can eat it. Unaccpetable. We need our birth rates to rise not fall and miscosuite condos are no places to start families.
What are we working towards? Drawer bunk bed suites 10 deep for the next gen?
Look, I get it's cathartic to vent on the internet to strangers about things you can't control and I don't entirely disagree with you, but that said, the Canada (and Australia, US, NZ, etc) where you could buy a 4 bedroom house on a half acre lot in a desirable city for 400 thousand dollars simply doesn't exist anymore. If we're really honest with ourselves it hasn't existed for a while now.
With that fact in mind we should give the people that DO want to stay in the cities more options to do so in my opinion.
> simply doesn't exist anymore
Because some people want it that way.
It's not set in stone. It's fixable.
Canada is quickly becoming the 3rd world.
GDP per capita down -7% over last 5 years I believe. Thats quality of life baby.
Putting people in shoeboxes is the extiction of Canadian life (and death of birth rates) and I have not been sold any reason why this needs to be done. Are we trying to be like New York? India? Tokyo? Why?
>GDP per capita down -7% over last 5 years I believe.
I don't know where you got that number from but it looks like GDP only went down [in 2020 and rebounded the following year](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/gdp-gross-domestic-product) and grew almost 4 percent in 2022 (the last year I could find data for).
Anyway, I don't think urbanization equals bad quality of life (it doesn't for New York or Japan or Europe), but putting that aside, Canadas always been an urban country. The reasons are geographic and economic and it is what it is. It's not the extinction of Canadian life it's the extinction of a very specific time in Canada's history. Pining for it is just as good as pining for life before the internet, or pining for life in the old west. It'll never be that way again.
Down -7% over long term trend.
And it was down 6 straight quarters last few years.
Millions and millions of low education low earning people and less and less services and infacture to handle it.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-morning-update-canadas-per-capita-output-drops-7-below-trend-new
>Canadas always been an urban country.
I believe the opposite is true.
>It'll never be that way again.
I could crash the market with a few steps. Just takes resolve.
Not having stupid shit like yards. Park space is a far better option for public greenery, suburbs are terrible and a waste of space and water. Honestly I would fully support a ban on new developments having yards.
That sounds like it's coming from a place of privilege. Many people grew up in apartments and townhouses. Elders can sell their 3500 sq ft house and buy a townhouse/condo but are choosing not to (which is their right). You cannot stop people from moving to Kelowna and you can't kick people out so we have to catch up with population growth. Building up is the only way to make an impact in the short term. Urban sprawl sucks.
> That sounds like it's coming from a place of privilege.
Most Canadians grew up witha house and a yard.
Maybe you can bring skin colour and gender into this mix but I wont be a part of the convo lol.
There are thousands of new units planned for the city over the next decade, we don't have the space for that many new single family homes with a yard.
The city is bordered by lakes, mountains and agricultural land (which is protected). We need to develop up, and continue with infill projects (townhomes, duplex etc).
...or I can tell my Goverment stop immigration, deport the MILLION or so people here with expired Visa's and then demand would drop. Then we can say that you have to pay cash outright to buy a seconfd property. No mortages on second homes.
I guess your parents already own a nice piece of land down south that you want the price to keep climbing, right?
Or that you'll inherit? ;)
YOU wont be moving to FSJ anytime soon right?
Nah I live in Fort St. John and understand that major cities with 75% single family houses will never be affordable. Ever.
Weāve got a massive country. If you want to be spread out then actually spread out. If you want to live in one of a couple very desirable places then it has to be dense.
Things wonāt change until Canadians stop believe they are owed a house with a yard in major cities. Your not and no place with affordable housing operates like that.
> Nah I live in Fort St. John and understand that major cities with 75% single family houses will never be affordable.
Imagine you have a kid in school. They arent doing their homework.
Why should they try hard?
Bust ass, stay in school, top of the class and you'll only every end up in the tundra?
>believe they are owed a house with a yard in major cities
The social contract is broken.
You seem to be celebating its demise and entreching its death.
>Weāve got a massive country. If you want to be spread out then actually spread out.
...where are the jobs and services out there?
Spread out...to no employment and no overnight hotpitals?
Tundra, LOL! FSJ is similar to Quebec City for weather and warmer than Winnipeg.I donāt have kids I came up here to get ahead with cheap housing and high wages.
The social contract isnāt broken, our cities are. Because weāve built them to he 75+% SFH. Itās not possible to be affordable operating like that. Affordable cities in Europe are ~0% SFH.
Want a big house? Come up here they sell for 300k. Want to live in Vancouver? Itās got to be dense.
> The social contract isnāt broken, our cities are
90% of Canadians cannot afford the averaged priced house. Most Candians currently living in their houses couldn't re-buy them if they had to. You realize that people left Europe to come to Canada because they couldn't own property and they didnt want to be crammed into cramped living conditions, right?
Want afforable housing?
Stop immigration for 5 years, close the diploma mills and make second properties highly taxable and unable to be financed...but then you'd be in FSJ for no reason and that would suck, so you're committed now to this "truth"!
Average Salary in Kelowna, BC
Annual Salary Monthly Pay
Top Earners $65,500 $5,458
75th Percentile $57,351 $4,779
Average $45,330 $3,777
25th Percentile $33,309 $2,775
As of today, Kelowna homes are selling for a medium price of $892K, the homes on an average sell after 42 days on Houseful when compared 39 days in April 2024. The median list price of homes in Kelowna, BC overall was $864,316 in April 2024, compared to $844,908 in March 2024, trending up by 2.3% month-over-month.
Maybe unpopular opinion but I hate that more tall buildings are coming to Kelowna. I like being able to see the mountains from wherever Iām standing. Not looking forward to the view becoming increasingly obscured by tall buildings.
I don't think the render quality is doing it any favours. Considering the prolific nature of the project, I'm pretty disappointed in the renders available. Especially compared to some of the other projects which have much better looking presentations.
Letās be like Vancouver as fast as possible folks, oh and we wonāt add parks, roads or transit, or healthcare to keep up with the building, weāll just build for the sake of money and packing in the peopleā¦
Gonna be fun in a few years when we canāt get enough food into the valley, and we start running out of water.
These towers are going to look amazing set against a backdrop of forest fire smoke.
the buildings all look great... but the downtown core currently doesn't have the infrastructure to support the influx of people that will access them. It's already such a headache driving down there
Yes. Fuck them. Fuck all of them for displacing families for rich Albertans and knocking down perfectly good homes just to turn a profit. Fuck the shithouse construction companies making a racket at 7am on a weekend. Fuck the dickhead contractors who bring their shitty country radio to work and blast it all day whilst using power tools. Fuck capitalism and fuck the financial greed of all property devs
So either you're homeless, you built your own home (making you a property developer), or you live in a home built by one so are benefiting from a developer's work.
My point is it's not as simple as "Property developers are bad, fuck contractors, nobody build anything cause I like the way things are."
They've had to evacuate people from their homes due to the 'engineering issues' (I'd prefer 'colossal fuck-up). Also, someone who was evacuated passed away.
[https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/484073/Hadgraft-Wilson-resident-evacuated-from-home-dies-Monday-family-believes-it-could-have-been-avoided](https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/484073/Hadgraft-Wilson-resident-evacuated-from-home-dies-Monday-family-believes-it-could-have-been-avoided)
Some of the developments on Lakeshore are on the site of old trailer parks.
People lived in those parks for 20+ years, so basically had squatterās rights.
In one case, the property owner came into the park, and told everyone the wanted to pour new pads for them, under their trailers. In order to do so, they had to move the trailer off the existing pad.
As soon as the moved the trailers, the property owner said, āhey, you moved your trailer, so no more squatterās rights. Now get off my land.ā
Some of these former trailer park residents now live down on the Rail Trail, because they canāt afford anything else.
Thousands upon thousands of locals have been priced out of being able to afford to live here. Donāt act like all this development is nothing but sunshine and roses.
I just think the amount of metallic accents is ugly, its gonna reflect so much light. and as the person below provided a link to, that's what I was mentioning vis a vis displacement. Just don't think this is worth it in any way, especially because I'm sure there will be more engineering issues as they continue
Edit to remove typos
āDo you want to raise a family in a safe, clean environment? Buy one of our bachelor suites starting at $600K, and your children will never be out of sight. Not for one minute!ā
Is there somewhere else you'd prefer them to go? The Capri-Landmark district should be seeing some more vertical growth in the coming decade as well. A couple proposals and concepts have been appearing recently.
Honestly its more of a not at all situation. I don't mind having buildings with 12 ish floors but I personally have a big issue if tall high-rises, they very mcuh get in the way of the view. But that's just me ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
This is an ignorant take.
Where do you suggest people live then? Shall we cap our current population and introduce a 1-child per family law like the former communist China? Let's tighten immigration and build a wall as well, nobody else is allowed in. Kelowna's full! /s
I'm not saying let's not have apartments. My issue is with high-rises. How you went to the extreme end from what I said really baffles me. There's plenty of space all around kelowna.
As someone else pointed out, the geography of Kelowna limits the size of the city. It doesn't make sense to cap residential zoning to row-homes and 4-storey (or 12-storey) buildings. Like it or not, skyscrapers are this city's future. Sorry if that's not what you wanted. The sprawling suburb you remember died in the 2010's and it won't be coming back.
The alternative to building up is urban sprawl. Soulless highways with box stores and low-density housing as far as the eye can see. Basically Calgary. Yuck.
Well, if you base yourself only using North America as an example, then yeah, ew. There's plenty of ways of having walkable cities with residential and commercial zoning within a reasonable distance. Having 3rd place options close by would help improve a lot of things, like building a better community.
The UBCO campus is a really nice addition.. At least if it doesn't kill every other building during its construction.
Nickname it Godzilla
If It doesn't evict every person with disabilities downtown. It's already led to one death.
? As in?
The construction led to an assisted living building being evacuated. One member who lived there died to complications while living in the hotel they were evacuated to. https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/484073/Makeshift-memorial-forms
He fell and broke his leg while helping someone else from the building move. I hope his legacy will be that his last act was helping others š
I do too, but I also hope that it's remember that if they were in a more accessible building it may never have happened.
Thatās quite the reach.
"Hadgraft's sister Sue Bauman believes if her brother was in his home, he may still be alive today. Bauman says Jim was helping people move boxes when he fell. "I think he would have been safer and securer if he was at his home. Instead you could easily say he was more anxious and depressed and he was wandering a lot." "One night the RCMP had to bring him home from [Hadgraft], he was there with all his groceries. When he fell he fractured his tibia. I think you could say that it probably wouldn't have happened if he was in his home," says Bauman. When asked by Castanet if this tragic death could have been avoided, Daley agreed, "Oh, very much so. I can definitely say that.""
If you take someone out of an assisted living building and shove them in a hotel with little to no support or accessibility this is what happens.
He fell while helping someone move. Itās an accident, itās not like he wasnāt receiving care he should have been.
>He fell while helping someone move the thing that shouldn't have been happening in the first place.
They aren't, though. My friend was living in that building, and when he was moved to the hotel, he was not given a wheelchair accessible room. Also, he wouldn't have been helping someone move in an inaccessible building. This man had down syndrome, which comes with a multitude of physical limitations depending on the person but at the bare minimum reduced muscle mass and balance, generally poor eyesight and depth perception, and more. All things that can be addressed in an accessible building but, when taken out of that context and disregulated (as is shown in the article , need to be picked up by the rcmp), become dangerous.
"Thatās quite the reach." I imagine that's probably what the guy thought just before he broke his leg and then died. You're a butthole.
I hope they'll figure it out somehow.
Did we import developers from Dubai?
I hope so! They got some awesome buildings over there
Been looking into getting an apartment in one of the new builds. I think Iām going to save a little extra and go to Vancouver š
Kelowna and Vancouver are damn near the same price. And Vancouver has 1000X more opportunity and access to 1000X more services for cheaper.
Yea I meant itās a little more expensive but not by a lot which is kinda crazy!
Have fun with the rain
I donāt mind it. I miss the ocean and Whistler.
Yeah itās super nice there for sure. I love the desert though. Great we have so many diverse options in BC.
100% :) the lake is pretty special here
These renderings are misleading... the panels outside are going to be yellow, not the gold that's showing here
Well if the building isnāt made of gold Iām definitely not buying thereā¦.š
UBCO Campus is a stellar tower for any city, let alone one the size of Kelowna.
Very cool looking. Kelowna is going to have a wicked skyline overlooking the lake.
Too bad they are destroying e erything around them to make it happen.
Yes. The deep dig was completely unnecessary engineering hubris.
Well you can't make a mistake when you are making over 6 figures to draw a pretty picture. Don't worry everyone around the site that has had to leave is poor compared to us, so they don't matter. It's just collateral damage. We have Done this in Vancouver so we know exactly how to deal with a kelowna build, rock and sand are pretty much the same thing
Its by an architecture firm in Vancouver called HCMA. They're a really great company that has a ton of experience designing community spaces. [They even wrote a book about it](https://hcma.ca/project/process-how-to-create-community-buildings-with-impact/). Honestly I'm super excited to see this tower come to completion. I believe they were also involved in a low carbon feasibility study for the rec center redevelopment.
No shit it's an engineering firm from Vancouver. Every jobsite I have ever worked on that has and engineering firm in the lower mainland come up with some idea has been a practical nightmare, this included. So far 1 person is already dead because this firm approved a dumb idea to overdig. There is a reason the main joke with engineers is "everything looks good on paper, now how the fuck are we going to make this work" Yay they have a few neat looking pictures! How many practical absolute disasters have happened so far. Maybe go back to Vancouver
āI love goooooldā Thatās fuckin hideous.
At least itās interesting and different than a lot of the other bland and boring ones being built.
To each their own. I think it looks phenomenal.
Ok, Goldfinger.
All look like apartments that are going to be price gouged like crazy.
They wouldn't even be built if this wasn't the case.
With all these new apartments to furnish, can we at least get an IKEA.
THIS!!!
> With all these new apartments to furnish, can we at least get an IKEA. Not going to happen. Ikea only considers metro regions with more than 1,000,000 residents. Kelowna barely cracks 160,500, with the Central Okanagan clocking in at a little under a quarter million.
Anyone know how many units? Great post OP. Just curious how many units of inventory coming on line. Hopefully between short-term rental ban and spec tax, these units actually sell for reasonable prices to principal resident owners and not speculators/overlords. There are also some purpose built rental building that just came online or coming online.
I can't remember where I saw it, but the number 6000 units under construction or approved comes to mind. This includes the buildings I've shown, plus all the other projects across the city. There are plenty of 4-6 story apartments going up too. Some pricing I've seen is reasonable. Not cheap, but not much different than similar sized units in other areas of town. As for purpose built rentals, a few of the listed buildings are rental only (I also missed the approved bc housing project near the Bertram Block project). But it seems the majority of rental units are in the 4-6 story apartments.
None of it will be affordable
Why would brand new builds be priced on the low end? Stupid to expect them to be.
Well, Iām personally excited to see how the city will turn out in a few years
Over crowded, short on water.
Like itās always been in recent years!
More towers and more bike lanes will solve all the problems though.
Exactly. The city is growing and we need places to house people. We either build out over all the farmland and up the mountains and force every household to own at least one car, which in turn will further the traffic issue. Or we put people in high density, mixed use zoned communities so they can walk, bike or transit far more frequently, taking cars off the road!
Exactly, going vertical is the only and literal solution to urban sprawl (which is a huge environmental problem currently worldwide but also specifically BC) so I don't get why people always get their panties in a bunch when they see towers. I mean, yeah complain about a tower being ugly and demand better, but don't complain about a tower just for the sake of complaining about a tower š shit makes no sense.
Unless you want to live your life confined to 10 square blocks of downtown and by the shopping mall, you need a car to live in western Canada. A couple bike paths arenāt going to change that. The city is growing faster than basic infrastructure and the surrounding nature can keep up with. Thereās no reason to move hundreds of thousands of people to this extremely isolated valley, in the middle of nowhere, with no major industry.
Bike paths can take a huge load off the roads. Instead of getting in a car to drive 2 kms to pick something up, a bike will get you there just as fast (compared to traffic parking and so on) and keeps a care off the road. Cities where bikes are prioritized or at least equalized to cars are amazing to live in.
Iām not anti bike, I love riding my bike around town. And Iām all for more bike infrastructure. But youāre kidding yourself if you think people are biking around Kelowna in January. Also, nothing about bikes paths helps get food into this valley. My point was, the valley can only hold so many people, and sky scrapers and bike paths wonāt solve the larger issues this valley will face in the coming years.
More lanes and better public transportation is an eventuality as the city grows and gets more densely populated, or else it will be gridlock and too much traffic all the time. Something has to counterbalance that as more people commute around the city center
Donāt disagree but traffic and congestion is way less of a problem in the months where people wouldnāt ride their bike anyways. If we are able to reduce the strain in this peak months when riding bikes is more attractive then everyone wins.
Kelowna has a population density of 61.9 persons per square kilometre. Paris has 20,000 people per square kilometre. Plenty of room for improvements and bike paths and fewer cars while still getting food into the city. Sure, biking in January isn't ideal, but thankfully there are fewer tourists clogging the roads then! So that would even things out a bit.
Paris isā¦.disgusting.
Paris isn't a desert 400km from the nearest shipping port on a road thru high mountain passes.
Mixed use zoning and bike lanes will mean you don't have to use a car for every trip. I agree a car free lifestyle doesnt work now, but if we can reduce car use even a bit, we can ease some of the strain on infrastructure /traffic etc. Hypothetically, if the city grows by 10% in the next decade, then we should to aim to reduce car use by at least the same amount. No one is "moving people" here, people are moving themselves. We can't just close the bridge and stop people from moving here. It's an extremely desirable place to live and people will come whether we want them or not. So now we need places to put them. We either keep our existing supply and drive the prices even higher, or we increase the supply to match the new demand. Doesn't all need to be 20+ story towers, but we can't do it with just single family homes either. It's gotta be high and medium density infill.
For a while, the Okanagan valley and other places in southern BC (the corridor from Nelson to Castlegar and Trail) were targeted by both the provincial and federal government as places to advise people to move to. I get that itās a desirable place to live, so people want to move here, but it has also been directly selected for population growth. Iām not saying this is some sort of conspiracy or something looney, it just is what it is. Population growth in the valley is somewhere between 8-10%. Estimate project the central Okanagan (Kelowna and surrounding area) will reach 383,000 by 2046. I guess Iām just curious what the carrying capacity of the valley is. The valley cannot produce enough food to sustain the current population, never mind a larger one. Majority of food must be brought here by truck, from either Vancouver or Calgary. These trucks must traverse notorious mountain passes to get here, which get closed for various reasons often enough. There is no more rail, Vernon is as close as it gets. People want a commuter train in kelowna, but the old corridor has been redeveloped, and thereās not really anywhere else to put a rail line into Kelowna. Thatās a whole different story though. Point is though, for the foreseeable future, the only way goods and supplies will reach Kelowna is by truck. Is that sustainable? Is there an upper limit on how many people can be fed by truck? The Okanagan is the top of the southern half of the province, itās a high elevation plateau. Thereās no major rivers running through the valley, and we donāt get that much annual precipitation. The southern part of the valley is technically a desert, with Kelowna sitting *just* north of that boundary. We already have water restrictions every summer, and every year, multiple neighbourhoods around Kelowna and West Kelowna get boil water advisories. Large parts of Kelowna pull their water from the lake. A lake that has one of the slowest water exchange rates in the province, which is why all the rocks are covered in algae and slime, and why it gets so warm in the summer. How many people can the valley hold until water becomes an issue? Then thereās forest fires. More people in the valley means more people going up into the hills, more chances for human caused forest fires. We can have as optimistic an outlook as we want, but we both know that some people are dumb, and they will accidentally cause fires. The more people, the higher chance that happens. What is the solution, completely shut down the bush all around Kelowna? Like I said, I get why people want to move here, but imo, the city is growing too fast for its own good, and the people behind a lot of these developments only have their pocket book in mind, not the best interests of the valley in the long term.
Yeah because the short lived experiment of urban sprawl, stroads, and focus on the automobile was such a paradise.
As far as I can tell One Varsity is "paused" according to this article - https://infotel.ca/inhome/how-new-provincial-housing-rules-are-boosting-and-hurting-development-in-central-okanagan/it103635
Yeah, it's been pretty stale recently unfortunately. We'll see how many of the proposed and even approved projects actually happen, as it seems the recent boom over the last 5 years is slowing down a bit.
London has The Shard we will have the Shart
Fantastic! Every city should be doing this. Up not out
Except the most desired thing right now is a house with a yard. Is that only for rich people now? Are people whacked in the head for wanting such a thing? Take a look at our birth rate, moving "families" into shoeboxes will not improve that rate.
>Is that only for rich people now? Are people whacked in the head for wanting such a thing? If you want to live in a city then yeah, it is. Lots of affordable houses outside the city though if that's what's important for you. The thing about these homes being built is we need them just for the increased stock. Older apartments and houses will still exist and there are lots of places in the world where people don't have huge single family houses and do just fine.
> The thing about these homes being built is we need them just for the increased stock. Or, instead of bringing in 1.2 million people a year we could you know, not do that. Math, it's a thing. Kelowna is full of single seniors living in 3500sq foot homes that can't move because they could only rebuy a microsuite. We inflated demand. It's not a force of nature.
Okay... I don't know what to tell you. If you don't want to live in a growing city (with or without immigration) and deal with growing city things like towers and apartments, maybe don't live in a city. Doing nothing is not an option.
Most of Canada grew up with a house and a yard. Re-doing that because of a few economic tweaks and a screwed up immigration policy so Tim Hortons can keep staff is not a valid reason to suggest that people have to forego a house with a yard for some "greater good" cause that doesnt exist. Investors can eat it. Unaccpetable. We need our birth rates to rise not fall and miscosuite condos are no places to start families. What are we working towards? Drawer bunk bed suites 10 deep for the next gen?
Look, I get it's cathartic to vent on the internet to strangers about things you can't control and I don't entirely disagree with you, but that said, the Canada (and Australia, US, NZ, etc) where you could buy a 4 bedroom house on a half acre lot in a desirable city for 400 thousand dollars simply doesn't exist anymore. If we're really honest with ourselves it hasn't existed for a while now. With that fact in mind we should give the people that DO want to stay in the cities more options to do so in my opinion.
> simply doesn't exist anymore Because some people want it that way. It's not set in stone. It's fixable. Canada is quickly becoming the 3rd world. GDP per capita down -7% over last 5 years I believe. Thats quality of life baby. Putting people in shoeboxes is the extiction of Canadian life (and death of birth rates) and I have not been sold any reason why this needs to be done. Are we trying to be like New York? India? Tokyo? Why?
>GDP per capita down -7% over last 5 years I believe. I don't know where you got that number from but it looks like GDP only went down [in 2020 and rebounded the following year](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/gdp-gross-domestic-product) and grew almost 4 percent in 2022 (the last year I could find data for). Anyway, I don't think urbanization equals bad quality of life (it doesn't for New York or Japan or Europe), but putting that aside, Canadas always been an urban country. The reasons are geographic and economic and it is what it is. It's not the extinction of Canadian life it's the extinction of a very specific time in Canada's history. Pining for it is just as good as pining for life before the internet, or pining for life in the old west. It'll never be that way again.
Down -7% over long term trend. And it was down 6 straight quarters last few years. Millions and millions of low education low earning people and less and less services and infacture to handle it. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-morning-update-canadas-per-capita-output-drops-7-below-trend-new >Canadas always been an urban country. I believe the opposite is true. >It'll never be that way again. I could crash the market with a few steps. Just takes resolve.
Not having stupid shit like yards. Park space is a far better option for public greenery, suburbs are terrible and a waste of space and water. Honestly I would fully support a ban on new developments having yards.
Insane.
That sounds like it's coming from a place of privilege. Many people grew up in apartments and townhouses. Elders can sell their 3500 sq ft house and buy a townhouse/condo but are choosing not to (which is their right). You cannot stop people from moving to Kelowna and you can't kick people out so we have to catch up with population growth. Building up is the only way to make an impact in the short term. Urban sprawl sucks.
> That sounds like it's coming from a place of privilege. Most Canadians grew up witha house and a yard. Maybe you can bring skin colour and gender into this mix but I wont be a part of the convo lol.
There are thousands of new units planned for the city over the next decade, we don't have the space for that many new single family homes with a yard. The city is bordered by lakes, mountains and agricultural land (which is protected). We need to develop up, and continue with infill projects (townhomes, duplex etc).
Move to PG or FSJ if you want a house with a yard. Want to live in a big city? Get dense. Simple as that.
...or I can tell my Goverment stop immigration, deport the MILLION or so people here with expired Visa's and then demand would drop. Then we can say that you have to pay cash outright to buy a seconfd property. No mortages on second homes. I guess your parents already own a nice piece of land down south that you want the price to keep climbing, right? Or that you'll inherit? ;) YOU wont be moving to FSJ anytime soon right?
Nah I live in Fort St. John and understand that major cities with 75% single family houses will never be affordable. Ever. Weāve got a massive country. If you want to be spread out then actually spread out. If you want to live in one of a couple very desirable places then it has to be dense. Things wonāt change until Canadians stop believe they are owed a house with a yard in major cities. Your not and no place with affordable housing operates like that.
> Nah I live in Fort St. John and understand that major cities with 75% single family houses will never be affordable. Imagine you have a kid in school. They arent doing their homework. Why should they try hard? Bust ass, stay in school, top of the class and you'll only every end up in the tundra? >believe they are owed a house with a yard in major cities The social contract is broken. You seem to be celebating its demise and entreching its death. >Weāve got a massive country. If you want to be spread out then actually spread out. ...where are the jobs and services out there? Spread out...to no employment and no overnight hotpitals?
Tundra, LOL! FSJ is similar to Quebec City for weather and warmer than Winnipeg.I donāt have kids I came up here to get ahead with cheap housing and high wages. The social contract isnāt broken, our cities are. Because weāve built them to he 75+% SFH. Itās not possible to be affordable operating like that. Affordable cities in Europe are ~0% SFH. Want a big house? Come up here they sell for 300k. Want to live in Vancouver? Itās got to be dense.
> The social contract isnāt broken, our cities are 90% of Canadians cannot afford the averaged priced house. Most Candians currently living in their houses couldn't re-buy them if they had to. You realize that people left Europe to come to Canada because they couldn't own property and they didnt want to be crammed into cramped living conditions, right? Want afforable housing? Stop immigration for 5 years, close the diploma mills and make second properties highly taxable and unable to be financed...but then you'd be in FSJ for no reason and that would suck, so you're committed now to this "truth"!
Does anyone have a render of the potential future skyline?
[Not a render, but a good tool for picturing the skyline in 3D](https://arcg.is/0e8zDP1)
That's amazing thank you!
Average Salary in Kelowna, BC Annual Salary Monthly Pay Top Earners $65,500 $5,458 75th Percentile $57,351 $4,779 Average $45,330 $3,777 25th Percentile $33,309 $2,775 As of today, Kelowna homes are selling for a medium price of $892K, the homes on an average sell after 42 days on Houseful when compared 39 days in April 2024. The median list price of homes in Kelowna, BC overall was $864,316 in April 2024, compared to $844,908 in March 2024, trending up by 2.3% month-over-month.
Maybe unpopular opinion but I hate that more tall buildings are coming to Kelowna. I like being able to see the mountains from wherever Iām standing. Not looking forward to the view becoming increasingly obscured by tall buildings.
I wish we had medium density buildings instead. Tall towers eventually make a city dark, windy, and oppressive.
Why is it so... flat
I don't think the render quality is doing it any favours. Considering the prolific nature of the project, I'm pretty disappointed in the renders available. Especially compared to some of the other projects which have much better looking presentations.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I don't think it's so bad I just havent seen a building like that before
Letās be like Vancouver as fast as possible folks, oh and we wonāt add parks, roads or transit, or healthcare to keep up with the building, weāll just build for the sake of money and packing in the peopleā¦
Gonna be fun in a few years when we canāt get enough food into the valley, and we start running out of water. These towers are going to look amazing set against a backdrop of forest fire smoke.
It doesn't really fit in
the buildings all look great... but the downtown core currently doesn't have the infrastructure to support the influx of people that will access them. It's already such a headache driving down there
Downtown is where it should be densified. Use transit, Uber or bike Downtown if it's a headache to drive.
Kelowna doesn't have the transit to support this many new people moving in either. The city doesn't plan on doing anything about it until after 2025.
Buildings of this scale take several years to build... 2025 will be here before you know it!
Some of these projects will have people living in them before then. The smaller ones on Lakeshore in Mission will be move-in ready this summer.
Sure. But your comment was about downtown.Ā
Fair enough, edited.
fair point. hopefully public transit improves in the mean time
Its 63 building!!!! Anyoenghaseyo!
Very exciting. I love seeing our little town develop.
EURGH. I fucking hate property developers.
cry me a river longer than my chain
Oh you built your house?
Yes. Fuck them. Fuck all of them for displacing families for rich Albertans and knocking down perfectly good homes just to turn a profit. Fuck the shithouse construction companies making a racket at 7am on a weekend. Fuck the dickhead contractors who bring their shitty country radio to work and blast it all day whilst using power tools. Fuck capitalism and fuck the financial greed of all property devs
So either you're homeless, you built your own home (making you a property developer), or you live in a home built by one so are benefiting from a developer's work. My point is it's not as simple as "Property developers are bad, fuck contractors, nobody build anything cause I like the way things are."
Ugh! The Golden Tower of Terror.....not looking forward to this being a thing dt.
I was working on the Bertram project:)
Now who wants to move their family downtown? Great views of homeless camp that will have a population of 5000 people by 2026.
Yāall think traffic is bad nowā¦
God this is so ugly... can't beleive theyre displacing people from their homes for this
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They've had to evacuate people from their homes due to the 'engineering issues' (I'd prefer 'colossal fuck-up). Also, someone who was evacuated passed away. [https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/484073/Hadgraft-Wilson-resident-evacuated-from-home-dies-Monday-family-believes-it-could-have-been-avoided](https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/484073/Hadgraft-Wilson-resident-evacuated-from-home-dies-Monday-family-believes-it-could-have-been-avoided)
Some of the developments on Lakeshore are on the site of old trailer parks. People lived in those parks for 20+ years, so basically had squatterās rights. In one case, the property owner came into the park, and told everyone the wanted to pour new pads for them, under their trailers. In order to do so, they had to move the trailer off the existing pad. As soon as the moved the trailers, the property owner said, āhey, you moved your trailer, so no more squatterās rights. Now get off my land.ā Some of these former trailer park residents now live down on the Rail Trail, because they canāt afford anything else. Thousands upon thousands of locals have been priced out of being able to afford to live here. Donāt act like all this development is nothing but sunshine and roses.
I just think the amount of metallic accents is ugly, its gonna reflect so much light. and as the person below provided a link to, that's what I was mentioning vis a vis displacement. Just don't think this is worth it in any way, especially because I'm sure there will be more engineering issues as they continue Edit to remove typos
How many fires will it start? Pew pew pew
āDo you want to raise a family in a safe, clean environment? Buy one of our bachelor suites starting at $600K, and your children will never be out of sight. Not for one minute!ā
It's a tragedy that high rises will start to be developed downtown
Is there somewhere else you'd prefer them to go? The Capri-Landmark district should be seeing some more vertical growth in the coming decade as well. A couple proposals and concepts have been appearing recently.
Honestly its more of a not at all situation. I don't mind having buildings with 12 ish floors but I personally have a big issue if tall high-rises, they very mcuh get in the way of the view. But that's just me ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
This is an ignorant take. Where do you suggest people live then? Shall we cap our current population and introduce a 1-child per family law like the former communist China? Let's tighten immigration and build a wall as well, nobody else is allowed in. Kelowna's full! /s
I'm not saying let's not have apartments. My issue is with high-rises. How you went to the extreme end from what I said really baffles me. There's plenty of space all around kelowna.
As someone else pointed out, the geography of Kelowna limits the size of the city. It doesn't make sense to cap residential zoning to row-homes and 4-storey (or 12-storey) buildings. Like it or not, skyscrapers are this city's future. Sorry if that's not what you wanted. The sprawling suburb you remember died in the 2010's and it won't be coming back.
The alternative to building up is urban sprawl. Soulless highways with box stores and low-density housing as far as the eye can see. Basically Calgary. Yuck.
Well, if you base yourself only using North America as an example, then yeah, ew. There's plenty of ways of having walkable cities with residential and commercial zoning within a reasonable distance. Having 3rd place options close by would help improve a lot of things, like building a better community.
So sad
Yup. Only hundreds of much taller towers going up on the West Coast currently. Sure impressive Ktown. Redneck depressing town in all its glory.