Kelowna outshone most of BC for new construction in 2023
Kelowna shattered its record for the value of building permits in 2023 for the third consecutive year.
The city issued permits worth almost $1.8 billion last year, up more than $585 million from its 2022 record which had surpassed the 2021 record by $23.5 million.
The 2023 total was bolstered by the $262 million permit for UBC Okanagan’s new downtown campus issued in August. That followed on the $140.6 million permit for the Mission Group’s Aqua project in June.
READ MORE: UBCO takes out record $262M building permit for downtown 'vertical campus'
Of the five largest cities in the Thompson-Okanagan region, only Kelowna and West Kelowna have posted their year-end statistics online.
West Kelowna’s permit values only reached $137.4 million in 2023, well below the $218.9 million issued the year before.
At the end of November, Kamloops had recorded $222.6 million in permit values compared to $415.4 million in the first 11 months of 2022.
Vernon’s permits were down by about $10 million to $192.8 million by the end of November while Penticton’s were down to $115.1 million from $183 million the year before.
A provincial data base with statistics to the end of October showed the province as a whole was down 10% to about $20 billion while Kelowna was up by almost 63%.
By the end of October, there were $2.81 billion in permits issued in the Thompson-Okanagan region with Kelowna making up 58% of that total. In all of 2022, Kelowna’s permits accounted for 39% of the regional total.
Provincially, Kelowna’s share went up as well, from 4.5% of the BC total in all of 2022 to 8.1% as of the end of October.
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