Photo: Contributed
A revitalization of the Dilworth mall along Highway 97 next to the superstore is being proposed by Vancouver’s Peterson Group – and frankly, this is the kind of change we should welcome in Kelowna.
The proposal would replace 11 retail units and one above-ground parking lot with four six-story apartment buildings with 466 new residential units and 10,000 square feet of retail space. Now, before people talk about the traffic problems of new developments, let’s first examine the merits of this proposal.
Kelowna is first and foremost a car city, most of the journeys are made in our cars, and it will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future. We are constantly adding more residents and regardless of what anyone thinks of our once small town growing every year, there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. If we just stop building houses, property prices will go up and new people will simply move to neighboring towns and pay their taxes there while continuing to work, play and use facilities in Kelowna without increasing our tax base. In addition, we will keep our children and their children from ever being able to live here.
The people who would move into these planned buildings could make their trips to the grocery store, hardware store, home office business, and more on foot. Yes, they’ll probably all own the cars, but with more footpaths we will reduce demand on our streets in a way that is not possible when developments are far from stores.
It is also important to think about where we want apartments and what they should look like. Our recent councils have rightly or wrongly chosen to approve huge numbers of high-rise freehold towers in the city center. They saw this as a quick fix to a supply problem and a way to revitalize the inner city. The truth, however, is that in a tourism-focused city like Kelowna, lakeside condos are being bought by investors and rented to the highest bidder outside of town on a monthly or weekly basis during the summer months. If you’ve ever tried to rent in Kelowna, you know that it is not easy to find an apartment to rent for an entire year and not just for the non-summer months.
The other way to tackle this supply problem is of course to approve more low and medium-sized apartments throughout the city center and in unused areas that are currently in need of increased densification or that do not currently offer housing. If you build mid-rise apartment buildings at the foot of Dilworth next to the superstore, they’ll be inhabited by Kelowna residents all year round – or bought and rented all year round – rather than renting them out to tourists at high prices during the summer.
Proposals like Peterson’s Dilworth revitalization are bringing brand new apartments that are more affordable than single family homes to a new area. By integrating apartments with single storey retail space into an existing big box retail area, the city can increase density without changing the structure of existing communities, which often leads to conflicts at the community level. Additionally, by focusing on low and mid-height buildings, we can build our housing offering without irreparably altering and destroying the mountain and sea views that make Kelowna the best place in Canada.
Is there any room for improvement in this development? Absolutely, there is always. But this is a good start and the right place.
