This 1949 home built for a returning veteran is an example of the heritage that seems to be on the way out as the North End redevelops.

(ROB MUNRO / iNFOnews.ca)

One of Kelowna’s oldest neighbourhoods is in the midst of a major makeover and long-time residents say their interests are playing second fiddle to a major lumber company.

“Without question, it’s being driven by the Tolko development,” Ray Lewis, president of the Kelowna Downtown Knox Mountain Neighbourhood Association and a resident for more than three decades, told iNFOnews.ca.

Vernon-based Tolko Industries owned the mill in Kelowna’s North End that was founded by Stanley Simpson in 1931.

READ MORE: Changing times: Tolko closure marks the end of a way of life, says local historian

It went through a number of owners and iterations before Tolko closed it for good in 2019, tore down many of the buildings and launched the Mill Site Plan to create a vision for the redevelopment of the 42-acre waterfront site.

A key focus of that plan is to honour the history of the area.

“The plan is inherently of the Okanagan, yet something the Okanagan has never seen before,” states a report from the Mill Site planners to Kelowna city council in September. “This means reflecting a core commitment to both Syilx and subsequent settler heritage.”

But when it comes to “subsequent settler heritage,” much of that revolves around the housing built for returning veterans after World War II that is rapidly disappearing.

“One of the very first elements with the North End Plan was the background study,” Lewis, who has been involved in the planning process as a member of the community liaison committee for the last three years, said.

“One of the things they recognized right away was preservation of areas of North End homes, the look and feel. It’s a national thing. It was the servicemen returning from the Second World War and the housing program. It was part of the country’s commitment to returning servicemen and helping them resettle.”

He and his wife bought one of the wartime houses on Okanagan Boulevard 32 years ago and raised their children there.

“We could have moved decades ago into a larger home or gone to Dilworth or to the South Slopes or wherever we wanted to go,” Lewis said. “But we love it here and we’ve invested heavily in our home and our neighbourhood. We finished raising our kids here. We’ve renovated the home inside and out but we’ve maintained the character of the home.

“The block we live on, the 500 block of Okanagan Boulevard, through that entire assessment was deemed one of the most original blocks left that should be preserved. That was a statement in the background study.”

That study does highlight two houses in that block that are in the Kelowna Heritage Registry.

“As the North End contains perhaps the largest and most intact surviving collection of Wartime Housing Ltd. homes in BC the Context Statement provides several recommendations to preserve these homes that were built for returning veterans,” that background report says.

READ MORE: Kelowna in focus: The North End's humble roots and high end living

That’s why it was a shock to Lewis when in July city council supported a staff recommendation to adopt “concept three” of the plan that ignored that heritage aspect.

“They show Okanagan Boulevard with all the homes being wiped out, the boulevard being widened into a greenway with zero traffic,” Lewis said. “It’s just a pedestrian path and it’s lined with townhomes from end to end between the Tolko development and the new Wolrod Park.”

Up until that point, he was not aware of any such plans for Okanagan Boulevard.

“It magically appeared when the concept plans were released for the Mill,” Lewis said “I said OK, now I understand why Okanagan Boulevard went from nothing to a giant greenway in the blink of an eye.”

But it’s not just his own street that he’s worried about.

Transportation and transit are major concerns for the neighbourhood.

With 3,500 homes proposed for the Tolko site along with four towers at the nearby Waterscapes development, Lewis estimates up to 12,000 new residents will move into the neighbourhood, not to mention lower density housing replacing the wartime homes.

“The only street that can provide any access to those 12,000 people realistically is Ellis and in the Transportation Management Plan, which is a 20-year document, there aren’t any improvements to any streets or corridors north of Clement,” Lewis said. “So how we move people is one of the biggest obstacles for us.”

READ MORE: Long-awaited plan for Kelowna Tolko site includes 3,500 homes, parks, waterfront walkway

The current bus route goes down Ellis Street, across Cambridge Avenue a block from Knox Mountain Park then back out along Richter Street.

Nothing is in any of the plans to add to that, other than a bus stop on the Tolko site.

Lewis suggested turning Kingsway into a cycle-friendly connection to the Okanagan Rail Trail, similar to the Abbott Street corridor.

He fears the neighbourhood’s concerns are simply being ignored in favour of Tolko and it’s not supposed to be that way.

“The North End Plan had actually been on the books for over nine years, but there always been other priorities so we just kept getting delayed, delayed, delayed,” Lewis said. “Ultimately, when the Tolko mill shut down and they said they were going to redevelop, the city said: ‘We better get our act together and look at the North End as a whole.’

“In theory, the North End Plan was supposed to be the overarching governing plan and it was supposed to control, in essence, how development was going to occur on the Tolko site. You and I both know that was never going to happen.”

The way things are going, Tolko’s land will be up-zoned to allow 3,500 homes in towers reaching to almost 30 storeys while the rest of the North End residential neighbourhood will be left to convert to fourplexes or small apartment buildings, as is happening in the rest of the city and the province.

During its presentation of the North End Plan to city council in July, staff talked about the transportation limitations for the next 20 years before any transit upgrades were anticipated.

“It seems like staff were admitting that Tolko was being up-zoned to the point that staff felt uncomfortable with any further zoning changes to the broader North End, resulting in a very unequal distribution of population and benefit of up-zoning, with one single landowner favoured by planning,” Davis, Kyle, a former city council candidate but not a North End resident, said in an email to iNFOnews.ca “Why is that? We are under-zoning broader community land for transportation concerns, in deference to the Tolko site, because. . .?”

As a long-time resident who relishes the heritage value of the North End, Lewis is not so concerned about the economic gains he could make by up-zoning streets like Okanagan Boulevard.

But that could change, and already is changing.

“I find it somewhat ironic that people come through the neighbourhood and go: ‘What a beautiful little neighbourhood. I love these little homes and all the trees and the space and you can actually breathe here,’” Lewis said “And they move into the neighbourhood, they rip down the little house and they put up a monstrous house that’s a really selfish build. It doesn’t look like anything that belongs here. There’s no consideration for your neighbours who live in their lovely little homes that they’ve enjoyed forever. I find it personally really upsetting.”

All he can hope for now is that, when the “final” plan is sent out for public input next spring, there is massive pushback from people who value heritage and the existing form and character over a massive new development.

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