This shows where the housing is proposed to go and what parts of the existing Dilworth shopping centre will be removed. The vacant land in the background is where the new Costco store will be built.
Image Credit: Submitted/City of Kelowna
June 23, 2021 - 11:00 AM
A proposed new City of Kelowna master plan calls for the western end of the Dilworth shopping centre to be bulldozed to make room for almost 500 housing units.
Documents submitted to the City of Kelowna earlier this week show the 11 units in the strip mall west of Staples being replaced by four buildings of six storeys each with 488 townhouse and apartment units.s
The two buildings closest to Highway 97 will have 10,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and 9,000 square feet of amenity space.
FreschCo (the former Safeway store), Staples and three other buildings near the highway will remain.
The internal street that now ends at the west end of the site will connect through to Baron Road.
“When the Costco development is complete in the vacant land to the south, big box retail will surround the site on all sides south of Highway 97 North,” states the city planning document. “The few residential developments in the area are disconnected and isolated. The introduction of residential uses on the Dilworth Centre site opens up an opportunity to better connect these areas.”
This artist rendering shows some of the new housing and amenity space.
Image Credit: Submitted/City of Kelowna
This proposal is somewhat in contrast to the opposition some residential neighbours had to the new Costco store, which is being built just behind the Dilworth shopping centre and directly across the road from some of the proposed new housing.
“You have run over your taxpayers to build your Costco in the middle of a city occupied by residential neighbourhoods,” Gord Duhaime recently wrote to City Hall in opposition to a plan to put a rock crusher on the Costco construction site.
READ MORE: Neighbours oppose more than rock crushing at site of future Kelowna Costco
“Rather than inferring how a mega-store will complement the shopping already close by, realize the detrimental effects to all the residents who purchase their homes under the certainty that only more residences would someday occupy that vacant land,” Jennifer White wrote to City Hall before the Costco lands were rezoned. “Ask yourself, would you want to have Costco and their gas station built next door to your home.”
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