2 highrise towers to be ‘jewel-like centrepiece’ of UBCO’s downtown Kelowna campus

Kelowna-based Mission Group has submitted plans for two towers that will make up the three-tower UBC Okanagan downtown complex.

The land at the corner of Doyle Avenue and St. Paul Street – once the home of the Kelowna Daily Courier – is in the process of being subdivided and rezoned.

UBCO submitted plans for its 34-storey campus and residential tower in late December. It will take one-third of the land that it bought jointly with the Mission Group.

READ MORE: UBCO unveils plans for an innovative 'vertical campus' in downtown Kelowna

Plans for the Mission Group were posted online by the City of Kelowna today, Jan. 11. They call for a 17-storey office tower and a 30-storey condo and long-term rental tower.

“The office building is intended to present a central ‘jewel-like centrepiece’ expression at the heart of the arrangement,” states the application. “The residential building is intended to play more of a background role and is set back from the street accordingly.”

The office tower is designed to front on St. Paul Street with 4,900 square feet of retail space at ground level with a total of 122,459 square feet of commercial space in the tower.

The residential building will have 287 units and there will be 461 parking stalls in what the application says is Kelowna’s first four levels of underground "tanked” parking.

“Architecturally the project attempts to create a hierarchy of building forms with the UBCO tower being the foreground, iconic structure in the composition,” the application says. “The addition of a downtown university campus as part of a larger comprehensively planned project will epitomize ‘transformative development,’ catalyzing significant future investment in the City of Kelowna and creating a built environment and ‘place’ that will influence the culture and identity of Kelowna for generations to come."

The Mission Group is currently building three towers – two residential and one office – just a block away at St. Paul Street and Bernard Avenue. Called the Bernard Block, one tower is now up and construction has started on the other two.

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