Micro-suites proposed for Capri area
The streets around the Capri-Landmark area are job rich, but house poor.
More than 4,000 people work in the area, according to city estimates, but the neighbourhood is home to only 2,548 people, as determined by the 2016 census.
A desirable target for an emerging urban area like Capri-Landmark is to have two residents for every job, says Ryan Smith, a City of Kelowna planner.
That ratio encourages a more compact built landscape in which people can walk to work or shopping, and use their vehicles less often.
So Capri-Landmark would have to house three times as many people as it currently does to achieve the 2-1 resident-to-worker ratio.
The city’s official community plan supports residential densification in Capri-Landmark. Between now and 2030, the city’s target is for 1,250 new dwelling units to be constructed in the area.
With each dwelling unit considered to have 2.15 residents for planning purposes, that would increase Capri-Landmark’s population by 2,687 by 2030, to just over 5,200 people.
Of Kelowna’s five urban centre’s, Capri-Landmark is currently only the fourth most populous. Larger ones are central Rutland (with 6,059 residents), downtown (4,315), South Pandosy (4,266), and the smaller one is Midtown around Orchard Park mall (2,234)
The city hopes downtown will experience the greatest population boost by 2030, with more than 2,800 new homes, or 6,020 new residents. That’s considerably more residential growth than is foreseen for central Rutland, where the projection is for 1,800 new units or 3,870 additional people.
For any urban centre, these are obviously long-term plans that may or may not be achieved.
Their progress depends largely on developers buying into the vision, assembling the necessary properties, and building what are expected to be fairly large multifamily complexes over the next 13 years.
That’s why a proposal going before city council for approval on June 27 is worth watching. Interestingly, in the eyes of city planners, the development proposal is both too big and too small.
Property owner Gurpeet Pannu hopes to win approval to knock down the existing single-family home and replace it with a fourstorey apartment building with 16 micro-suites, which are apartments with less than 320 square feet of living space.
City planners would have preferred if Pannu had bought other properties in the neighbourhood and sought approval for a larger apartment complex.
It was never anticipated, city staff say, that a four-storey apartment building with 16 suites would be appropriate or desirable for a regular-sized municipal lot.
If council approves the application, staff warn, it might invite similar densification proposals from the owners of comparably-size properties.
The overall result, they say, would be only partial progress toward the larger goal of significantly increasing population in Capri-Landmark, while also setting up potential conflicts with the owners of existing single-family homes concerned at seeing mini-apartment blocks popping up on their streets.
"This is going to change the whole flavour of the street," Coun. Luke Stack said May 29 when the matter was first discussed at council. Stack and Mayor Colin Basran sided with planners who had recommended the file simply be closed and not advanced to a public hearing.
But a majority of councillors said they wanted to hear what nearby residents had to say.
Interested members of the public can comment on the proposal at a public hearing set for June 27 beginning at 6 p.m. at City Hall.