Kelowna Construction

[giallo]

Here are three photos of the project just as a reminder.

[aastra]

I have never seen it used for a 4-5 storey building before like this.

Wasn't the new-ish Chem & Bio Engineering building at UBC built this way? I seem to remember that it was. Maybe some other newer buildings at UBC, too.

Edit: I think my memory is rusty. It was the two-story portion that was built that way.

[SOSS]

Love this hotel project. So glad to see the builder is doing it right! Tons of public consultation, building a dock, improvements to the park. Basically buying people's good will. Fantastic.

I seem to recall the preload was done post demolition of the old hotel and prior to the opening of the parking lot. Is that right?

[Klazu]

Great project, but where exactly is it going to be located at? I was in Kelowna this past weekend and was thinking to myself how great it would look if Kelowna would embrace high-rises more to make for a bigger skyline.

Lots of projects underway in Kelowna and I was happy to see all the progress.

[giallo]

It will be located next to Kerry Park, and a stone's throw away from the Sails.

[Ogopogo Fan]

From: https://www.kelownanow.com/watercool...RCMP_Building/

Shovels In the Ground for New Kelowna RCMP Building
We used about half of our tax dollars on the development and construction of the new RCMP detachment in Kelowna, but it’s an investment for the future.

Sergeant Nick Romanchuk, along with Mayor Colin Basran, addressed Kelowna citizens on Wednesday, during the ground breaking ceremony for the new RCMP building located on Clement Street, just before Richter.

Currently the biggest city development underway, building the new detachment comes with a $48 million price tag.

Despite the substantial cost, the new building will accommodate our growing community.

“The workable life of the existing building has been extending well beyond its capacity, and is too small to meet current needs or provide the best possible policing services to our community,” Basran.

Built in 1962, the old police detachment is just shy of 30,000 square feet, and was designed to serve our small 14,000 population. Considering our population is now booming with more than 122,000 people, the upgrade was essential in order to provide adequate service, explained Sergeant Romanchuk.

“On behalf of the RCMP, we’re extremely happy to be at this stage and we’re looking forward to the new building. It’s time, it’s served its purpose very well, but we’ve out grown it,” added Romanchuk. “The population in the city is growing. It grows every year and the more people we have the more police officers we need to maintain a certain level of service.”

Roughly around 100,000 square feet in size, the new detachment will allow all RCMP factions to work under one roof.

“We’ll have a state of the art building compared to what we have now,” said Romanchuk. “Our forensic people don’t work at all in this building right now because there’s just no space or no proper equipment for them there.”

Although the tax impact for this new building will be felt over the next two years, development in the area is also expected to influence road utility improvements and intersection upgrades on Clement and Richter, explained Basran.

Moreover, the new lot where the building will go provides ample room for further growth, and the detachment itself is anticipated to serve the community for at least 50 years.

Located in Kelowna's north end, the new building will take approximately two years to build. Back in July, Council approved a name for the new building: City of Kelowna Police Services.

[Ogopogo Fan]

From:https://www.kelownanow.com/galavanti...ng_to_Kelowna/

Fun and Funky Hotel Concept Coming to Kelowna

An electric hotel in Victoria is bringing its bold colours and retro-style to Kelowna.

The successful Hotel Zed brand is anything but ordinary, and its funky concept will be used to upgrade Abbott Villa, a 52-room motel across from Kelowna's City Park.

“We are going to do in Kelowna what we did in Victoria, and in what I think is an even better location,” said Accent Inns/Hotel Zed CEO Mandy Farmer. “We are going to up-cycle the hotel, keeping the best part of its architecture and create almost from scratch a retro-modern and back to retro accommodation experience.”



Hotel Zed launched two years ago across from a Victoria suburban shopping mall and has since exceeded all of Farmer’s and Tourism Victoria’s expectations. It brought an interactive, extraordinary space for guests to enjoy, transforming a former drab two-star motel.

The Victoria space features a mega-watt colour palette with refurbished Tanker steel desks, rotary dial phones, and lava lamps. There’s a well-tricked out lobby with ping pong tables, a state of the art sound system, record player, and manual typewriters for postcards.

Guests are shuttled around Victoria in Hotel Zed’s signature 1967 VW buses, and the plan is to do the same in Kelowna.

Construction of the hotel will begin in November, 2015 with an opening date in time for the busy 2016 summer season.

“We are so proud of how well received our Hotel Zed brand has become in Victoria. Our chain of Accent Inns hotels across B.C. are well respected within the leisure and business travel community for providing solid value and a great night’s stay,” said Farmer. “But, with Hotel Zed we wanted to do something revolutionary. Something that would make people stop and go, ‘whoa, how fun is this?’ Of course, the service has to live up to the design, and over the past two years we have created a hotel property that is exciting guests to the point where they are sharing it with friends and family before they arrive, during their stay, and then after their stay! It’s so awesome to see guests so entirely stoked to be staying here.”

Farmer believes that once complete, Hotel Zed will become a catalyst that will help to drive further revitalization within the Abbott Street area.

[Emtee]

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

[Ogopogo Fan]

Sweet. Nice to see some news about Grace. I thought the silence over the past few months meant nothing would be going ahead in the near future.

[Metro-One]

Wow, if all this comes true and Kelowna has Sopa Square, Grace (Lucaya), and the above hotel project under construction by next year that would be amazing (and a massive change to the skyline).

[Emtee]

Central Green development won’t go as high as envisioned

Posted: Friday, September 25, 2015 10:02 pm
Ron Seymour

Not as tall, not as green and not as quiet.
Revised plans for Kelowna’s Central Green development will go to city council on Monday with some key changes from what was originally proposed.
However, city staff say the re-worked vision still achieves key goals such as environmentally friendly building standards, underground parking for future residents and a pedestrian link through the development site.
“The proposed amendments do not compromise other city goals for the project,” reads part of a report to council by planner Ryan Roycroft.
Still, there are some notable differences between what was originally envisioned for Central Green in 2007 when the City of Kelowna, then the owner of the 5.3-hectare property at the southwest corner of Harvey Avenue and Richter Street, led a public planning process for the site.
Three highrises of up to 20 storeys were proposed for the northern edge of the site, along Harvey Avenue. The development was not to contain any interior roads, to emphasize its pedestrian focus, and public green space would be maximized.
The city sold the site to Al Stober Construction for $6 million last year, and municipal staff have worked with the company to create a new plan that “meets community objectives for the Central Green site while also being economical to develop,” Roycroft said.
Now, the site plan consists of several four- and six-storey condominiums, with the possibility of two 12-storey buildings in the future. The overall residential density is less than what had been envisioned.
A “low-speed roadway” is now planned for the site’s interior, which the developer says is necessary to support some planned commercial premises. That planned commercial plaza “to serve residents and passers-through reduces the size of ‘green’ in the centre of the property,” Roycroft says.
Last month, Stober Construction officials said they had decided against highrises after doing their due diligence for the project.
On Monday, city council will consider making the required bylaw and official community plan changes necessary for the revised vision of Central Green to proceed.
Separate components of Central Green, on land not owned by Stober Construction, include social housing complexes. The project also still includes a large public park to be developed on city-owned land immediately north of Rowcliffe Avenue.

http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/ne...7aed04623.html



Proposed site plan, including building heights, from the Council report.

[Design-mind]

Is there any sign of construction on SOPA Square development in the South Pandosy district now that Aqualini Devlopment has taken over?

[Ogopogo Fan]

Originally Posted by Design-mind

Is there any sign of construction on SOPA Square development in the South Pandosy district now that Aqualini Devlopment has taken over?

They've put a new crane up and there's some activity in the commercial spaces.

[Design-mind]

Originally Posted by Ogopogo Fan

They've put a new crane up and there's some activity in the commercial spaces.

Good to hear that they are moving ahead on this project. The design doesn't thrill me, but I do love the location.

[Ogopogo Fan]

A residential building of up to 12 storeys could one day be built on the current site of the Kelowna RCMP detachment.
And a new “iconic” performing arts centre is envisioned for the near-waterfront property now occupied by the 55-year-old Kelowna Community Theatre.
JM Media Whistler Cornucopia 298551 300 x 250 rail top 3
A major civic plaza is also touted for the area between the courthouse and the library parkade, along with an extension of the so-called art walk from the Rotary Centre through to Doyle Avenue, as a way of encouraging more pedestrian activity throughout the cultural district.
These are among the key suggestions in a downtown plan, now being developed by staff through public consultation, that will be presented to city council today.
Beyond a 20-year horizon, the plan also projects three highrise buildings eventually being constructed on large parking lots around Prospera Place.
The report also raises the possibility of the existing Okanagan Heritage Museum, which dates back to the 1960s, being knocked down and replaced elsewhere to make way for affordable housing.
But no specific future use is identified in the plan for nearly 70-year-old Memorial Arena, which is said to have less than 20 years of operational life left in it.
The so-called civic block plan looks at the future of city-owned lands in the area bounded roughly by Queensway, Water Street, Clement Avenue and Ellis Street. A key driver in the formation of the plan is the fact that the Kelowna RCMP will be moving from its current building on Doyle Avenue to a new location on Clement Avenue in two years.
Dozens of people have so far participated in the plan’s preparation, city staff say, through workshops and feedback provided through websites. Based on direction expected to be given today, another public house on the plan will be held in early December.
There are no specific project timelines or budget estimates provided in the plan. It’s essentially a long-range document, intended to provide the framework inside of which various proposals for actual developments are considered and discussed.
The fate of the existing RCMP site will provide the most pressing subject for council and public consideration. Staff suggest the site be offered to developers in the form of a long-term land lease for construction of a residential building of between six and 12 storeys.
Getting more people to live downtown has been a long-held goal of the city as a way of providing more vibrancy and economic activity to the central core.
The community theatre, at the corner of Doyle and Water, should eventually be redeveloped into a new performing arts centre with an impressive architectural design to match its prominent location, the report says.
An earlier draft of the plan contemplated that site also being opened for highrise construction, but the version going to council today no longer includes that option.
“Due to the low-rise character of the area and the challenges of introducing building height in close proximity to the waterfront, a performing arts centre without the inclusion of a tower is proposed to support a future iconic building for the cultural district,” the report says.

From: http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/ne...5f2663715.html

[SOSS]

Anyone know when we can expect the next update for the corridor study from Peachland to Kelowna including the location for the second crossing?

[Emtee]

Originally Posted by SOSS

Anyone know when we can expect the next update for the corridor study from Peachland to Kelowna including the location for the second crossing?

I saw this article earlier this month which briefly updates the planning process:

http://www.castanet.net/news/West-Ke...uplet-corridor

[DKaz]

They should just build a steel multiuse path off the side of the bridge and shoehorn a third eastbound lane in. Traffic can be pretty terrible at times. The other bottleneck appears to be Horizon Dr/Boucherie Rd intersection. I do tend to agree that a second crossing is just not needed yet. I do worry about the day where they have to close the bridge for whatever reason and I have to head up to Vernon and back down to get to work.

[csbvan]

Kelowna doesn't need a second crossing yet, what they needed was a more appropriate location for the first crossing.

[Metro-One]

Originally Posted by csbvan

Kelowna doesn't need a second crossing yet, what they needed was a more appropriate location for the first crossing.

Kelowna is a metro area of nearly 200 000 now.

A second crossing is needed.

Having two medium sized crossings is far superior to supersizing a single crossing.