Inside source hints at skulduggery in city-backed highrise deal in downtown Kelowna
The redevelopment of the former RCMP site in downtown Kelowna has been controversial since it was first proposed in 2019.
Now, just days before it’s going to Kelowna city council for final approval, an alleged former employee with the developer, Appelt Properties, is saying it was a deception to start with.
“If you go to Appelt Properties Facebook page you will see, in February of 2021, they posted a cropped photo of the highrise on Doyle,” the former employee wrote in a text message provided to iNFOnews.ca by Kelowna homebuilder Les Bellamy.
“I worked for the company back then,” the text message says. “We didn’t have the wider design internally, just the highrise. I was told, when I cropped it, I needed to only show 10-12 storeys. I didn’t know the backstory at that time.”
The implication was that a much taller building was always in the plans.
“That’s completely untrue,” Greg Appelt, president of Appelt Properties told iNFOnews.ca today, July 22.
While he did, in fact, have the drawing of the building cropped, that was an early rendering to be used while consulting the neighbours before determining the final height, he said.
“The building (rendering) that we initially sent out, we hadn’t yet confirmed above the podium so we had to be careful what we were putting out publicly before we finalized what we would eventually be developing,” Appelt said. “But, what we could share, was the podium.”
This project dates back to 2017 when a new Kelowna RCMP detachment opened. The old building, on city-owned land at 350 Doyle Ave., was torn down.
In 2019, the city put out a call for proposals for a developer to lease the land and put up a 13-storey residential tower with some civic amenities.
In October of 2019, after the deadline for proposals closed but before the winner was named, the newly formed Kelowna Legacy Group held a press conference saying that project should not go ahead.
Instead, they said, that whole area of the city, called the civic precinct, should be studied to create a comprehensive plan for its evolution in a “legacy” area of the city.
READ MORE: Legacy group 'shocked' over council reactions to proposal
Bellamy, shortly after, became the spokesperson for that group, which has lobbied against the redevelopment plans for the site ever since.
A company called RISE, now named Appelt Properties, won the proposal bid and came back with a 13-storey tower proposal in June 2020.
But that tower was almost three times the width the city envisioned for any highrise. The design triggered a petition campaign led by the neighbouring Innovation Centre and resulted in a redesign to 25 storeys, which was made public on March 23 of this year.
READ MORE: Petition triggers redesign of controversial downtown Kelowna highrise
That’s now named "Muse" and is going to city council on Tuesday for a development permit. It also needs a height variance so the public will be able to comment.
A week after the new, 25-storey design was made public, the Kelowna Legacy Group called for an investigation into the “bait and switch” that it claims was done.
It also suggested a higher tower was always in the plan despite the restrictions imposed in the call for proposals. The bidding process should start over again, they argued.
READ MORE: Legacy group calls for investigation into 'bait and switch' on former RCMP site
Today, Bellamy sent iNFOnews.ca a copy of his latest letter to council, calling for the application to be deferred until after the Oct. 15 municipal election or, at least, to have the height variances denied.
Other information he sent includes copies of text messages from the former employee.
“Please don’t ever mention me or that I told you this,” they wrote. “I just wanted you to know your instinct is correct.”
In his letter to the city, Bellamy says he got the information on June 6 and the identity and work history of the former employee “has been independently verified.”
The former employee fears retaliation from Appelt, the letter said.
Bellamy’s letter says the images from the Facebook page have been studied and are similar, to the untrained eye, to the more recent renderings.
“This fact creates further concern that the architectural design posted in February 2021 was, as the source claims, taller than 13 storeys and design staff have simply cropped the top off the building to make it appear shorter,” Bellamy wrote. “Based on the information provided to date, we believe the allegations by the source are consistent with the imagery and the developer’s process to date. With the information provided by the source, we strongly believe that Appelt has always had the intention to create a project that exceeded 13 storeys in height. In other words, a ‘bait and switch.’”
The new design cuts the number of rental units by 59 to 259, which reduces the economic viability of the project, Appelt told iNFOnews.ca, questioning how that could be considered a “bait and switch.”
The two men met last night at a meeting for the residents of the Madison highrise a block away on Doyle Avenue.
“At the meeting, I would say, there was a single very vocal opponent who railroaded most of the meeting, that being Les,” Appelt said. “So, it’s hard for me to get an understanding of what everybody else thinks. Les doesn’t want his views blocked and, quite frankly, doesn’t want anything developed there and he’s looking to frustrate the process, clearly.”
Bellamy, of course, disagrees.
He does live on the ninth floor of the 15-storey Madison condo tower but the only good view he has is out of one bedroom window towards the One Water Street tower.
The rest of his view is blocked by the Innovation Centre across the street, he said.
Bellamy said he pointed out to Appelt that part of the Legacy Group’s concept for that site included an 11-story hotel/condo building.
“So, clearly, this is not about my views,” Bellamy told iNFOnews.ca. “This is about my concerns, and the Legacy Group’s concerns, about the use of public land in our cultural district. Sticking a condo building in the middle of that seems like a bad decision for the City of Kelowna.”
The hotel/condo concept, he explained, was a general idea put out as part of the redevelopment of the larger area.
It was a suggestion in an effort to trigger a broader discussion of the future of the city’s civic/cultural district as a whole rather than it happening piecemeal.
That discussion has not happened.
If city council approves the permits next week it will take about six months to do detailed design work so construction is expected to start next spring, Appelt said.
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