Posted Sep 10, 2015, 1:00 PM
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: Dec 2011
Posts: 116
|
|
Quote:
Unfinished highrise to be reborn as Grace
Artist's rendering of the new Grace highrise, which is about to be built.
Posted: Wednesday, September 9, 2015 9:02 pm
Steve MacNaull | 0 comments
The glass-and-steel condominium tower to rise 21 storeys on the former Lucaya site on Sunset Drive has a new name: Grace.
It’s fitting because the developer of the highrise is Jingon, the Richmond arm of a company in China, where the word Grace holds even more significance than it does in North America.
Grace in this case means simple elegance and effortless beauty, which can be applied to the modern-but-timeless architecture of the building.
Jingon bought the Lucaya site out of receivership in 2012 for $3.8 million and sat on it waiting for the market to improve.
With Kelowna's condo glut absorbed, mortgage interest rates still rock bottom and more and more people wanting the condo highrise lifestyle downtown, the time is now, according to Don Warkentin of Kelowna-based Fortune Marketing, the firm that will be selling Grace’s 155 units.
“Grace will be part of the revitalization of downtown,” said Warkentin.
“So much will be coming on stream downtown in the next two years with Grace, the Interior Health headquarters, the new RCMP building and the highrise Westcorp hotel.”
Highrises garner a lot of attention in Kelowna.
The city only has 15 of them and any new proposals are met with excitement.
News of Grace comes just a week after Al Stober Construction scrapped plans for three highrise rental apartment buildings at Central Green downtown in favour of traditional four-storey wood-frame structures.
Lucaya hit the skids in 2008 when the recession hit.
Only the foundation was built.
Jingon has hired Ledcor to build the tower and the contractor has been doing site cleanup and foundation testing for the past few months.
The concrete foundation has been found to be intact and strong, so it will become the base of the new Grace.
Already, the project seems to have fallen behind.
In January, Fortune made noises pre-sales would start in April and construction would start in May for early-2017 completion.
Now, construction is set to start at the end of October, the same time Fortune will launch pre-sales.
That timing would likely put completion at mid-2017.
Lucaya, which was owned by Calgary-based Lucaya Redux Corp., imagined 86 big and pricey suites in the 21-storey tower to be purchased mostly by oil-rich Albertans.
The Grace version of the tower has been redesigned to contain 155 smaller one-bedroom, one-bedroom-with-den and two-bedroom configurations.
Fortune expects most of the buyers will be people from Kelowna who are buying their first home or those wanting to move for a maintenance-free, downtown highrise lifestyle.
There will also probably be some Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton buyers who will purchase condos as investments to rent out, use as second homes or move here to retire or work in a smaller city.
The starting price of a one-bedroom, 575-square-foot unit on a lower floor will be $225,000.
Pricing is still being finalized for bigger condos and units higher up.
Fortune Marketing is also selling Kelowna projects West Harbour, Green Square, The Gate and The Grove.
Jingon also has plans to build an 73-acre complex of retail space, entertainment venues, office buildings, hotels and conference centre on Duck Island in Richmond.
|
http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/ne...443825b52.html
|