Three-quarters of Lake Country building permits more than a year old
Lake Country is a beautiful Okanagan community of about 18,000 souls flanked by Okanagan, Wood and Kalamalka lakes.
It was the fastest growing community in the entire Okanagan from 2016 to 2021 (22.4%) and had the second-highest residential assessed property values of $972,000 as of July 1, 2022.
But last year it only processed 66 residential building permits and has 147 applications in its planning queue, some dating back five years and 75% have been in the queue for more than a year.
“Obviously, our track record from last year is very disappointing,” Mayor Blair Ireland told iNFOnews.ca. “I can tell you for sure, myself and my council are unhappy with the situation.”
One developer told iNFOnews.ca that it took 671 days before Lake Country’s planning department even opened his application file, aside from an initial discussion.
“This is for a single-family home on a single-family lot zoned for single family,” Les Bellamy, owner of Bellamy Homes in Kelowna said. “There are no variances, no zoning changes.”
He filed four applications at around the same time a couple of years ago. The first one took 14 months to work its way through the queue, the second 16 months and this one about 22 months. He has no idea where the fourth application sits on the list.
This comes at a time when the provincial government is pushing to get more housing built faster.
In June it placed 10 communities, including Kamloops, on a special list with directions to speed up their pace of construction or the province will step in.
More communities are expected to be added later this year. Kelowna is on a list of those 37 possible additions but Lake Country is not.
READ MORE: Kamloops needs to tow the provincial housing line or go on its 'naughty' list
That’s because the criteria for making those lists does not include the time it takes to process applications.
If Bellamy applies to build a waterfront house in Kelowna, it will take 30 to 45 days to make it through its queue and get to a planner.
Right from the beginning, planners will tell him if he needs things like Geotechnical studies and a qualified environmental professional.
He described a Catch-22 labyrinth he has to negotiate in Lake Country.
Just one example is a waterfront house on Carrs Landing Road that he tore down to make room for a new house the owner wants built.
Bellamy was told he needed a 30-metre landscape buffer from the agricultural land across the road. Since there was an existing buffer, he could apply for an exemption or have the application go to council, which would cause further delays.
That meant he had to draw up a new site plan.
“For me, I draw my own plans so it’s no big deal,” Bellamy said. “But if I had to source this out like every other builder and homeowner, now I’m going to be in the queue to get a draftsman or architect to give me a new site plan.”
Before drafting the new site plan, he had to figure out just what kind of buffer is required.
“I go to this page very deep in the bylaw and there’s a table there that shows what you need,” Bellamy said. “In my situation I need a Level 1 buffer. For a Level 1 buffer, the description says: ‘No requirements defined.’”
Once he got the new site plan filed, he was told the District of Lake Country no longer accepted exemption applications. But since he has an existing buffer, he can just demonstrate how that fits the criteria and resubmit the site plan he had just submitted.
And it goes on and on.
While it might seem comical in some ways, it’s very expensive, adding $250,000 to $300,000 to the two homes that have been approved (they are both nearing the $2 million price range).
“In my situation, when these four jobs came in, they are significant jobs for me,” Bellamy said. “I’m not a large volume builder so I’ll only commit myself to so many projects a year. When these came in, I stopped taking work, not knowing we would have these delays.”
He was initially told it would take about six months for each application to work through the queue.
“I turned down almost $10 million of work with the assumption I would have these homes to build. It was such a huge financial loss and I had to lay off five employees.”
Besides, the delay means Lake Country is missing out on permit revenues, development cost charges and higher taxes charged on high end homes.
Not such a big deal, Ireland argued, pointing to a 50-lot subdivision extension that will only net about $150,000 more in taxes and $1.5 million in development cost charges.
“Once those development cost charges are used, we’re still going to have to plow the roads and look after the sewer pipes and look after the water pipes and look after everything else that goes with that subdivision, so that money disappears pretty quickly,” he said.
He also cited the example of one proposal that was taking three years to process.
“The plan wasn’t sufficient,” Ireland said. “You can get a group (of developers) who try to get our engineering department to design their project for them. They have to go to an engineer and get things designed properly.”
Not that he’s making light of the problems his community has with its planning department.
“It’s disappointing that we’ve got to where we’ve got,” Ireland said. “It’s difficult for council to take the heat on something like this. Where we’ve got to is a function of how the administration has been rolling for awhile.”
Ireland became mayor last October, by acclamation, after long time Mayor James Baker retired. But Ireland was on council representing Okanagan Centre for the previous two terms.
“We got here through a pure lack of employees,” Ireland said.
Before COVID, the District normally got 180-200 applications per year. At one point it was down to only one planner.
Then COVID hit and the volume of applications doubled to the 400-500 range.
But it’s not just the lack of staff driving the delays.
“It’s very difficult to compare Lake Country to the City of Kelowna or the City of Vernon where they’re less of a rural nature as far as their landscape and geography are concerned,” Jared Kassel, director of planning and development for the District told iNFOnews.ca.
“Unless you’re on flat land, which hardly anybody is because most of our undeveloped flat land is in the Agricultural Land Reserve, you’re going to be on the side of a hill so that’s going to necessitate a lot more complicated applications as far as slope stability but also for servicing for residences or multi-family development. Just trying to get water or sewer and all those types of things on top of a hillside is a very complicated process.”
He came to Lake Country in January 2022 so he’s still trying to turn the planning department around.
He’s trying to streamline the process so more can be done online and will be taking a number of proposals to council to improve the process, starting with an application for federal funding tomorrow.
But he needs support from council to bring about change.
“We want to do it,” Ireland said, noting that technical applications that require engineer or geotech reviews are now handled by staff instead of council.
“I’ve done a lot of work on figuring out what we can do to help our planning department,” Ireland said. “I’ve talked to (Kelowna city manager) Doug Gilchrist and (former Kelowna city manager Ron Mattiussi.) I’ve talked to people in every facet in local government, in building and planning and numerous developers, trying to do as much as I can to get this moving forward.”
Kelowna is developing ChatGPT technology that will put a lot of development applications online so they are complete when a planner sits down with them. Kelowna is planning to share that technology and Ireland is keen to get on board.
But the train is rushing down the track at increasing speed as Lake Country continues its rapid rate of growth.
Just last week Eagle Crest Construction told iNFOnews.ca that it’s proposing 360 rental units for the derelict Airport Inn Lakeside property.
READ MORE: Lake Country’s notorious Airport Inn to be replaced by hundreds of rental apartments
Those details were news to Ireland since a new development application has yet to be filed. The original plan was for condos but given high interest rates and the fact that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is offering better rates for rentals, those plans are changing.
Those units are in addition to about 2,500 other proposed rental units Ireland learned about after meeting with a group of three or four developers recently.
While there are a lot of high-end homes being proposed for the tops of ridges overlooking Okanagan Lake and Highway 97, there is plenty of land in the downtown area of Lake Country zoned and serviced for multi-family.
That means those applications should move quicker, combined with the fact that rental housing is given a higher priority.
The highway through the middle of the community – and the province’s apparent total unwillingness to make an improvements – an $80 million water filtration plant and other road and water issues need to be tackled as well.
“We need to be concentrating on the fight with the province over roads, water and sewer,” Ireland said. “We need to be concentrating on the environment and how we can best protect our community with climate change. These are the things we need to be doing but we’ve got to get planning working. That’s incredibly important.”
He's hoping significant improvements can be made in the next year.
“We’re certainly not happy about the permitting issue,” Ireland said. “We’re trying to give Jared Kassel all the tools that he needs to do it and at the same time protecting the community.”
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