A backhoe digs a basement for a house in Kelowna.
(JOHN MCDONALD / iNFOnews.ca)
March 19, 2016 - 9:30 AM
CITY ISSUES CLOSE TO HALF-A-BILLION DOLLARS WORTH OF PERMITS IN 2015
KELOWNA - Building permits issued last year by Kelowna were worth close to half-a-billion dollars and have surged over $100 million from last year.
Across the board, statistics kept by the planning department since 1987 show solid growth in 2015 in both the commercial and residential building sectors but little increase in activity in the industrial and institutional sectors.
Still, a report from city planner Graham March shows the total value of all permits — $464 million in 2015 — handily beats the 2014 total of $351 million and the five-year average of $341 million.
Permits for 1,430 new housing units of all kinds were issued last year and outstripped 2014 by 39 per cent, up 401 units.
Density in 2015 tipped away from residential in favour of multi-family with 60 per cent of new permits issued for that type of housing.
Growth in multi-family housing was particularly strong in the Highway 97 sector around UBC Okanagan.
Permits for just over 400,000 square feet of new commercial space were granted in 2015, up substantially over the average of 331,000 square feet each year since 2011.
A pair of projects across from each other downtown, the Kelowna Community Health Centre and the Okanagan Centre for Innovation, accounted for approximately 290,000 square feet of the new commerical space issued permits in 2015.
For more on downtown Kelowna construction, click here.
To contact the reporter for this story, email John McDonald at jmcdonald@infonews.ca or call 250-808-0143. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.
News from © iNFOnews, 2016