Innovation centre a winner
From the living plant wall in the lobby to the rooftop deck and all six floors in between, the Okanagan Centre for Innovation in downtown Kelowna is a winner.
The office building, which opened in April, was honoured with the Stan Rogers Memorial Award at the recent B.C. Economic Development Association Summit in Victoria. The award recognizes a private-public project that has the most significant impact on a local economy each year.
Past winners include Surrey’s Innovation Boulevard and Chilliwack’s Canada Education Park. The seven-storey Innovation centre at the corner of Ellis Street and Doyle Avenue has 105,000 square feet of office space for technology companies of all sizes.
Some tenants include Fresh Grade, Banana Tag, Intraline Medical, WTFast, Wheelhouse Ventures, Martketer, The Profile Co-Working Space, Accelerate Okanagan, Interior Savings Credit Union’s IT department, Business Development Bank and Okanagan College’s animation program.
The award is named after Stan Rogers, the late Chilliwack businessman and community booster who helped turn a massive abandoned vegetable processing plant into the Legacy Pacific Industrial Park.
Flightcraft
KF Aerospace delivered so well on the first five years of a contact with WestJet that the airline has hired the Kelownabased aircraft maintenance company for another half-decade.
For the past five years, KF, formerly Kelowna Flightcraft, has done engineering, design and maintenance work for WestJet as well as installed winglets, installed onplane Wifi and live TV systems and retrofitted interiors with new seats.
It will continue to do similar work on WestJet’s fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft.
The work is done at the main facility in Kelowna as well as KF’s hangar in Hamilton.
Both locations will install more maintenance lines to handle the work.
KF is Kelowna’s largest private-sector employer with 650 workers at its hangars at Kelowna airport.
Besides the WestJet contract, KF does maintenance and retrofit work for other airlines, governments and military, flies cargo and leases planes.
Just Ducky
Despite flooding dominating the news, there’s still thrills to be had in the hills above Peachland.
Zipline adventure attraction ZipZone is having some fun with the water theme by introducing, tongue firmly in cheek, a radical new safety device for ziplining.
It’s a big inflatable duck, usually for floating in the lake or pool.
However, for ZipZone purposes, you can ride it eight kilometres away from over-full Okanagan Lake and high above ground along a zipline.
“No level of safety is too much for our guest,” said ZipZone president Kevin Bennett with a laugh.
“The Canadian spirit of entrepreneurship, invention and can-do attitude is alive and well at ZipZone and we welcome our guests to try out this exciting new innovation.”
ZipZone actually has six of Canada’s highest and longest freestyle ziplines as well as the country’s highest freefall pole at 80-feet at the edge of a 300-foot cliff.
New dean
After 24 years with Okanagan College, Heather Banham is retiring as dean of the Okanagan School of Business.
That means someone new will fill the post and that someone is Bill Gillett, who is finishing his job as chairman in ethics and social responsibility at Southern New Hampshire University.
Previous to that position, he was the dean of business at the same university, where he led 58 full-time faculty, 125 adjunct faculty and supported more than 1,600 students in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs.
Gillett has also worked in the private sector as a lawyer in New York and Detroit and in insurance in Seattle and London.
“The reputation of Okanagan College is what attracted me to the institution,” said Gillett.
“Every interaction I’ve had with the college and students has only reinforced that for me. There is a clear focus within the institution to provide an education that prepares students for a globalized economy and I’m looking forward to building on that focus.”
Maple leaf-shaped hamburger patties and cookies, maple syrup-flavoured ice cream bars, fruits and veggies in maple leafshaped
Canada 150
trays, pizza that looks like the Canadian flag and cheese in special sesquicentennial packaging.
Okanagan Safeway and IGA grocery stores are going all in for our nation’s 150th birthday July 1.
Besides all the Canadian-a-themed foodstuffs already for sale at stores, all Safeways and IGAs in the Valley are having a Canada Screams for Ice Cream Day today.
For a $2 donation you’ll get an ice cream treat and the money will go to support Okanagan Boys and Girls Clubs.
Only organic B.C. flour is used in all of the breads and pastries made at True Grain Bakery in
True Grain
Summerland.
The bakery is celebrating its fifth anniversary today and letting people know it also sells crackers, croutons, pasta, pancake mix and a wide assortment of organic B.C. flours you can use in your own baking.
True Grain won new business of the year from the Summerland Chamber of Commerce when the bakery first opened in 2012 and has since also won three consecutive business of the year accolades.
Appreciation barbecue
For all the volunteers who came out on Wednesday to help clean up Marina Way Beach in Penticton as flood waters recede, Cascades Casino is have a Back to the Beach Appreciation barbecue today 2-4 p.m. on the rooftop of its Match Eatery.
Besides food and drink, the event will also feature a bocce tournament and shuffleboard.
Steve MacNaull is The Okanagan Weekend’s business reporter and columnist. You can reach him at steve.macnaull@ok.bc.ca.