Greater Kelowna is the fastest-growing urban area in the country, Statistics Canada reported today.
The Central Okanagan’s population rose 14% between 2016 and 2021, from 194,892 to 222,162, according to information gathered during last year’s census.
The next highest growth rates were reported in Chilliwack at 12.1%, while Kamloops, Nanaimo, and London, Ont. all had a population increase of 10%.
A decade ago, greater Kelowna’s population was 180,000.
Top city planner Ryan Smith says the rapid growth rate attests to the continuing appeal of Kelowna both as a retirement destination but also increasingly as a region with a vibrant economy and a diversity of employment opportunities and lifestyle options.
“There’s a lot of people from all over Canada and the world who’ve discovered Kelowna,” Smith said in an interview. “We’re not the best-kept secret anymore.
“We’ve got a fantastic city with a great waterfront and a great climate,” Smith said. “In the last five years, a lot of people have moved out of bigger urban areas elsewhere and moved to Kelowna. They have quite a bit of disposable income and they have the luxury of choosing where they want to live.
“That trend, I think, was really the beginning of the fire that’s sort of taken over our real estate market,” Smith said.
Asked if he thought it was good or bad for Kelowna to have the country’s fastest growth rate, Smith said it was neither. “It’s just the way it is,” he said.
“There’s great things that come with growth, like economic prosperity, and jobs in the construction, engineering, and development sectors, all of which provide considerable economic spinoffs,” he said.
But the strong demand for housing that’s associated with population growth pushes up the cost of both single-family homes and rental units, he said. And growth also brings challenges such as additional traffic, demand for more municipal services, and social problems like increased crime.
“There’s positives and there’s negatives,” Smith said of greater Kelowna’s rapid population growth.
While the Central Okanagan has Canada’s fastest overall population increase, central Kelowna is the country’s third-fastest growing downtown, Statistics Canada also reported Wednesday.
The number of people living in Kelowna’s central core rose from 13,415 in 2016 to 16,605 last year. The 24% growth is behind only that experienced in the downtowns of Halifax and Montreal.
Construction of high-rises, mid-rises, and four-plexes in Kelowna’s downtown accounts for most of the population growth in the past five years, Smith says.
“For a long time, people complained about downtown Kelowna,” he said. “They said, ‘There’s nothing to do down there’. Now, you hear some people say, ‘I don’t go down there because it’s too hard to find parking’. That’s a sign of success because it means there are a lot of people downtown.”
Between 3,500 and 4,000 more housing units for downtown Kelowna are already in the permitting process, Smith said.
“We had so many years of not being able to get more people living downtown,” he said. “Now all of a sudden, everybody wants to be downtown at the same time.”
