The $262-million UBCO downtown campus helped push Kelowna building to a new building permit record this year.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/City of Kelowna

Kelowna is likely to pass the $1.5 billion mark in building permits issued this month, shattering the old record for a full year set last year.

That will also likely make Kelowna the fourth busiest city in the province in terms of permits issued, even though it's only BC’s seventh biggest city.

By the end of September, the city had issued close to $1.5 billion in permits this year.

So far in October, another $28.5 million in permits have been issued, leaving the city only about $6.5 million short of the unrounded $1.5 billion mark.

For all of 2022, the city issued permits worth $1.211 billion, breaking the 2021 record of $1.188 billion.

This year’s record was boosted by the $262 million permit issued in August for the UBC Okanagan 43-storey tower downtown.

READ MORE: UBCO takes out record $262M building permit for downtown 'vertical campus'

An Oct. 3 deadline for increases to development cost charges added to the urgency of getting building permit applications filed.

Those increases were approved last year but developers had one year to get their permit applications in and still pay the old rates.

In the downtown core where most new housing is being built, developers saved $3,000 to $4,000 per unit by getting their permits to the city before Oct. 3. For the new UBCO tower, with its 473 units, that’s about a $1.5 million savings.

The deadline led to a rush of permit applications with more than $280 million worth of permits being issued in just three days from Sept. 27 to 29.

Those included two permits totalling $118 million for the Water Street by the Park towers on Leon Avenue, two permits worth about $77 million by the Mission Group for projects on Bertram Street and Abbott Street, and a $70 million permit for the new Kelowna airport terminal expansion.

A $14.7 million permit for a Pridham Avenue project brought the total to $280 million.

The big permits issued this month were all taken out before the Oct. 3 deadline.

The provincial government publishes regular building permit updates for all BC communities but at this point it only goes to the end of July.

Last year, Kelowna ranked fifth in the province for the value of building permits issued behind Vancouver ($6.27 billion), Burnaby ($2.43 billion), Surrey ($2.06 billion) and Coquitlam ($1.2 billion).

By the end of July this year, Kelowna had moved into fourth place as permit values in Coquitlam had dropped far below last year’s level.

Just because all these permits are issued doesn’t mean the building will actually happen.

The building permits are good for six months and they can be renewed for another six months. After a year, if ground isn’t broken on a project, the permit expires and the higher development cost charges will have to be paid.

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