OKC trying to replicate on-campus housing project
Okanagan College has gone back to its own drawing board in an effort play catch-up on housing at its Penticton campus, where the student union is growing frustrated with years of delay.
Penticton is the only site among the college’s four main campuses that does not offer on-site student housing, and that disparity is becoming more noticeable as new housing projects near completion in Kelowna, Vernon and Salmon Arm.
What’s different about Penticton, explained OC president Neil Fassina in an interview this week, is the presence of an adjacent residential development site on Timmins Street, the developer of which was considering partnering with the college to add student housing there.
“Regrettably, that partnership model fell through, which put us behind,” said Fassina.
“It’s not that Penticton has ever been less of a priority, it was that we tried something slightly different in Penticton on the first go around. It wasn’t the successful approach. We have now gone much more the way we would traditionally do it, and just trying to speed that process up so we’re playing catch-up with our other three locations.”
The traditional way will replicate the concept for the new building in Vernon, which will feature 100 apartments of various sizes when it opens this fall.
“What we’re trying to do is not only put a proposal together that we could get done quickly because the design is effectively done, but also do it in a manner that is cost effective because we’ve done a lot of the design work,” said Fassina.
At this point, though, there are no timelines attached to any of it as OC staff continue working with counterparts in various government ministries to complete a business case for the project, which is eyed for a large field on campus that’s currently occupied by a decommissioned NAV Canada radio tower.
“The timeline is effectively out of our hands because it’s not something we control. I really wish we could, but it is something we require funding to be able to pull off,” said Fassina, who described the project’s priority as “incredibly high.”
The three new housing projects – 216 apartments in Kelowna, 100 in Vernon and 60 in Salmon Arm – were announced in March 2021 by the B.C. government at a total cost of $67.5 million, of which just $1 million came from the college. All of them are due to open in September 2024.
It remains unclear if, or when, the government will come through for Penticton.
“The proposed project at Okanagan College in Penticton was short-listed and invited to provide a business case for government consideration,” confirmed a statement this week from the B.C. Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills.
“An invitation is not a guarantee of provincial funding; however, government looks forward to reviewing the business case and will give it careful consideration.”
That will come as cold comfort to the Okanagan College Student Union, which has gotten nowhere with its own efforts to inspire on-campus housing in Penticton – a city with a 1.5% vacancy rate as of October 2023.
“The OCSU is fully aware of, and invested in, the issue of student housing for Penticton-based students of Okanagan College. OCSU has lobbied Okanagan College, Penticton city council, and Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon on this issue in the past, as well as surveyed our student members in Penticton on the status of their housing,” said Aija Otto, the group’s Penticton chair, in a statement this week.
“OCSU believes that all students deserve access to affordable, dedicated housing on, or near, campus. Safe and secure housing is a right for all human beings, and our Penticton students are as deserving as the students at every other OC campus. We sincerely hope that the government and institution will prioritize a student housing project in Penticton in the near future.”