Photo: Contributed
Even the promise of becoming one of Kelowna’s largest parks is not enough to put a number of green groups on the side of the developers of the McKinley Beach project.
The McKinley Beach developer will appear before a public hearing Tuesday to seek support for a series of proposals that would expand development boundaries and include a 246-acre park inauguration with a land value of $ 11 million.
“Today’s vision for McKinley Beach is not the vision approved by the council 10 years ago. Neither is Kelowna,” a group of self-proclaimed sustainability organizations said in a press release that opposed the changes.
“Since then, the city has faced the wrath of climate change and is mobilizing an emergency response worldwide to mitigate the worst effects.”
The proposed changes would add more land for future development of up to 815 units, in line with the extensive development zone established for the project.
This zone, approved a decade ago, allowed 1,300 units to be expanded. To date, 485 have been built.
Employees who recommend the change say the expansion will provide more space for residential development, which will help “protect the environment, hillside locations and parks” and make development less dominant.
They say the change will make it possible to spread the density over a larger area.
Opponents, however, say the proposal, received by the Council two weeks ago at first reading, represents a significant expansion of sprawl in an area that they say additional housing will be limited to 375 by OCP 2040.
They say that when the resort parish was initially approved, it comprised mostly apartment buildings in a target resort, while the new proposal is for more than 800 single-family homes.
Shayne Meechan, executive director of Green Okanagan, says a proposed land swap to dedicate a 246-acre park to the city is “environmentally irresponsible” without first conducting an environmental impact assessment of the resource reserve.
The group says the additional units also run counter to the city’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by adding more vehicles, parking lots, garbage and boat launch sites.
They urge the city council to postpone a final decision on the proposed land swap until a “full climate impact assessment of change along with an analysis of the real cost to the city of the infrastructure improvements that the proposal would require” is completed. “
