Two years and still waiting to build a house in Lake Country
While the province is pushing to get more homes built faster, officials with the District of Lake Country is still apparently dragging its feet.
Les Bellamy, the owner of long-established and award-winning Bellamy Homes in Kelowna, sent a “Happy Anniversary” email to Lake Country’s mayor and council on Friday, Sept. 29.
“From team Bellamy Homes, we want to wish you a Happy Second Anniversary!!” the email, which was copied to iNFOnews.ca, says. “Oct. 1, 2021, will remain in our thoughts for many years to come. It seems almost surreal that we began this journey two years ago (730 days); and so much has happened since that day.”
What hasn’t happened is any progress on his application to build a house on Carrs Landing Road.
Bellamy told iNFOnews.ca in August that about two years ago he filed applications to build four homes on different sites in Lake Country.
One application took 14 months to process and another took 16 months. While this one is now at two years, he didn't know where the fourth one was in the process.
Because he’s a small company, he turned down other work in anticipation of building these four homes. Without that work he had to lay off seven employees. He lists their first names in the email to mayor and council.
“We did not ask for any variances, exemptions, rezoning or subdivision,” Bellamy’s email said. “We just simply wanted to build a home on a typical piece of land in Lake Country.
“The land is zoned for single family. In fact, for the past 30 years, there was a home in the exact same spot. Unfortunately, after 730 days, we are no closer to knowing if we will ever receive a permit than we were the day we applied.”
Lake Country does post a list showing the status of all its outstanding development applications.
When iNFOnews.ca interviewed Mayor Blair Ireland and the District's director of planning and development Jared Kassel they talked about the efforts they were making to speed up their approval process.
READ MORE: Three-quarters of Lake Country building permits more than a year old
At that time, there were 147 applications on the list. That has now dropped to 145, the oldest one dating back to Nov. 19, 2019, for a Official Community Plan/zoning amendment for a property on Berry Road.
Its status is listed as “under staff review.”
For Bellamy’s application, its status is listed as “approvals.” There’s no explanation on the site as to what that means.
“Bellamy Homes has received 40+ industry awards since we began, and were named the 2015/16 Small Business of the Year by the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce,” its website says. "We’ve won several awards for our design, construction and customer service, and we take pride in our reputation as Kelowna’s finest new home builders.”
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