Photo: City of Kelowna
City planners recommend city council to reject subdivision of 680 houses for Kelowna’s upper mission
A massive subdivision proposed for Kelowna’s Upper Mission shows a conflict between the city’s current official community plan and a major departure from suburban growth.
Thomson Flats in a 680 home development that has been in the planning stage for more than seven years and has been slated for nearly three decades as part of the overall Southwest Kelowna development.
Urban planners recommend that the city council reject the Melcor Lakeside zoning plan, which suggests, among other things, that it is no longer related to shifting the city’s politics away from suburban and hillside development to more urban and infill development.
Employees state that the development will result in vehicle overload in the upper mission area, trigger higher infrastructure costs, and unlikely to have a positive impact on the affordability of housing.
“Despite the best efforts of the applicant, through technical analysis and policy review, the staff has concluded that the cost and impact of the proposal outweigh the benefits,” the staff said.
“The opportunity cost of this proposal is just too high.”
Andrew Bruce, a former urban planner who advises the project, believes that he has shown that the project is feasible from an infrastructural and transportation perspective.
“Technically, we met all of the criteria,” Bruce told Castanet News.
“The problem is that during this period the city got caught up in the Imagine Kelowna process that is building up for its next OCP. They had this philosophical shift or perception that suburban development is bad.”
Bruce says when they started the process, city politics gave way to the development of Thomson Flats.
“The problem with this process taking so long is that the landscape has now somehow changed. What we are trying to do on Monday is for the Council to look at this under the main guiding document we started with, which is the current OCP We think it fits, we think it complements this broader plan for the Southwest Mission Sector. “
Speaking of traffic, Bruce said three traffic impact assessments were conducted which he believed showed a number of road network failures if Thomson Flats did not go ahead.
“Thomson Flats actually did have some relief options as they connect South Perimeter Road from Kettle Valley to the end,” he said.
“We don’t think the part of South Perimeter Road they are designing will be as effective as the entire street.”
He says the road and much of the infrastructure will be built by development. It is then handed over to the city, which is responsible for maintenance and long-term life cycle costs.
“It was always considered that (Thomson Flats) would be developed, that there would be the South Perimeter Road through it. We therefore believe that this is the sector of the Southwest Mission in terms of neighborhood planning, infrastructure provision, housing and housing completes all of these things. “”
If the council approves the plan, Bruce said it will be three or four years before construction can begin.
If it doesn’t, it’s likely over as part of the recommendation also includes removing the land from the city’s permanent growth line, which becomes a bigger and more difficult political issue in the future.
