27 storey highrise on Barnard Avenue approved by stealth

I am very disturbed by Kelowna City Council’s recent decision to approve the application for a 27 storey building (a 12 storey height addition on top of 15 storeys that were already allowable under the existing zoning) at the site owned by Aquilini Development on the 400 block of Bernard Avenue. It is preposterous to treat a proposal to increase the height of a building by 77 percent as a routine application for a height variance as if it was only an additional one or two storeys being requested, yet that is precisely what was done in this case.  What the developer did here was make an end run around the present Zoning Bylaw and Downtown Plan, and a complicit city planning department, Advisory Planning Commission, and city council let him do exactly that instead of requiring that changes be made to those two planning documents with the full consultation of the public. How easy it is to get your way if you are a developer in Kelowna, especially if you have greased the palm of several city councillors by contributing to their election campaigns!

 

By caving into this developer, our city council has managed to significantly change the character of the downtown in much the same way as the Downtown CD Zone (21) would have done by setting a new standard for building heights which every developer from here on in will be demanding for their own projects there. No less important than the CD Zone because of its character-changing impact, the Aquilini proposal in contrast hardly received any public scrutiny or opportunity for public comment. That the item was on the agenda at the April 7 city council meeting was unadvertised and unbeknownst to all except those who regularly read the agendas for future city council meetings on the city’s website. I would venture to guess that 99.9% of the public were thus unaware that they had the opportunity to address city council on this important application that evening.

 

Compounding the egregious nature of the offense was the way the meeting was conducted. With a full agenda and the Aquilini application being the next to last item, city council did not begin to hear presentations on that item until around midnight. Council had an option to adjourn the meeting at 11:00pm considering the lateness of the hour, but Councillor Charlie Hodge moved that council press on. After all, there were still development applications to approve and no one on council wanted to stand in the way of “progress” even if it meant that the public gallery would be empty. Consequently, council approved a precedent setting and city character-changing development that the public was largely unaware was coming before them that evening and at an hour when nearly every member of the public was absent. But that is the way that city council conducts its business in Kelowna and, unfortunately, gets away with it.

Tags: Aquilini Development, downtown, highirse, Kelowna, redevelopment