Kelowna’s historic district set to shrink in size
A heritage conservation district that includes some of Kelowna’s oldest and most architecturally-appealing homes will be reduced by about one-quarter in size.
The reduction for the Abbott Street Heritage Conservation Area is a result of a provincial edict that municipalities must increase the number of residential units in established neighbourhoods as a way of addressing the housing crisis.
Advocates for heritage protection say the HCA’s reduction could threaten long-standing efforts to preserve and protect some of the city’s oldest homes. “The assault on the Abbott Street Heritage Conservation Area continues . . .it’s shocking and discouraging,” heritage advocate Susan Ames said Friday.
“This residential plan was laid out in 1904, one year before Kelowna was even incorporated,” Ames said.
But city officials say they have no choice but to comply with the provincial directive, which includes designating the area around Kelowna General Hospital as an area where new buildings of up to six-storeys will be allowed.
“It’s not the city that’s doing this. It’s the province,” top city planner Ryan Smith said. “The city is just implementing it.”
The province has designated the area around the hospital as an important transit area, given the number of employees at KGH. As a result, the province wants to see more housing, particularly in the form of multi-family buildings, in the neighborhood.
An estimated 70 to 80 of the approximately 375 properties currently contained within the Abbott Street HCA will be excluded from its boundaries and put into the higher-growth planning district being created around the hospital.
“We didn’t really have a choice,” Smith said. “If we’re going to have to allow six-storey buildings near the hospital, then we can’t have heritage guidelines that say something totally different.”
The province’s original intention was to direct the city to allow new buildings up to 12 storeys around the hospital. But the maximum height was halved out of concern taller buildings would interfere with the flight paths of helicopters using the helipad atop KGH.
The new boundaries for the revised Abbott Street HCA will be presented to council at public hearing on Tuesday as part of a larger package on municipal changes that must be undertaken to comply with the provincial directive to increase housing.
Despite the HCA’s anticipated reduction in size, Smith said concerns the new policies could represent significant and immediate changes to the Abbott Street area are somewhat overstated.
That’s in part because the HCA doesn’t actually prevent the demolition of old homes, as commonly believed, but rather sets levels of reviews and approvals for proposed redevelopment in the area that don’t exist elsewhere in Kelowna.
Many owners of the old homes in and around Abbott Street have no particular interest in redeveloping their properties, and the planning hanges won’t force them to do so, Smith said.
And the high cost of land in the neighbourhood, reflective of both its overall attractiveness and proximity to downtown and Okanagan Lake, makes it more difficult for the kind of land assemblies generally needed to make redevelopment possible and economically feasible, he said.
“There’s actually been very little change over time in that area, even during the biggest development boom we’ve ever had in Kelowna,” Smith said. “I don’t think, by and large, it’s going to change that much now . . .I don’t think we’re going to see a blast of change through the Heritage Conservation Area.”