Opponents of Kelowna Springs Golf Course development protest at city council

The plan to turn half of the Kelowna Springs Golf Course into an industrial park has strong opposition and it was visible at Monday’s Kelowna city council meeting where councillors moved ahead with a public hearing.

City council agreed to hold a public hearing, Feb. 9, while people sat in the gallery holding signs that simply read “no.”

The golf course is currently zoned private recreation, but if the city rezones half the property to industrial then the developer can move ahead with turning it into an industrial park.

“There is obviously a lot of strong views and a lot of discussion that individuals would like to have around this particular item,” mayor Tom Dyas said at the meeting.

The Kelowna Springs Golf Course redevelopment has been in the works for years since Denciti Development Corp. bought the land in 2022. The city previously received hundreds of letters against the development and decided not to allow the development to go ahead.

The initial plan to turn the course into an industrial park failed, but now the developer has a new plan which would preserve half the golf course by giving it to the city in exchange for 9.1 acres of industrial land elsewhere.

Councillors Gord Lovegrove and Ron Cannan were the only ones on council who voted against the public hearing, arguing residents have already been loud and clear that they don’t want to see the course developed.

“We’ve already heard from staff, an excess of industrial land for at least the next 30 to 55 years. So the benefit to the city of allowing this rezoning to industrial is unclear,” Lovegrove said. “I’m quite prepared to leave it as is.”

Cannan tried to delay the development’s progress because he said Denciti’s owner, Garry Fawley, met with councillors to lobby them on Jan. 19, but broke the rules when he didn’t register with the city’s lobbyist registry.

Alexandra Wright, a former BC Conservative candidate, is a farmer who lives right next to the course and she said locals are motivated to get the city to kill the tentative deal with the developer.

“We’re pretty organized this time,” she previously told iNFOnews.ca. “There’s a network of us… we’re ready to fight and we’re not gonna back down.”

Wright said her land next to the course is likely to flood if the development goes through.

She said people who don’t live next to the course want to save it because it’s an important amenity and the city needs to preserve it because it’s a wetland that serves an ecological purpose.

“There is the bigger concern that everybody in Kelowna is feeling right now, which is that we are turning our city into one giant parking lot,” she said. “We’re taking away all of those things that attract young people to a community, attract tourists to a community. All we’re left with is Walmart and Costco.”

The next public hearing date on the city council’s calendar is March 10, and the land swap deal is supposed to be finalized on March 30.