Door may be closing for new RV parks in Kelowna

SOME ON COUNCIL THINK THEY AREN'T WORTH THE TROUBLE

KELOWNA – A RV park approved for a farm on KLO Road may be the last one Kelowna sees for some time.

“Council plans on having the bigger discussion about whether we even want them on agricultural land at all,” Mayor Colin Basran says.

Basran says a meeting a few weeks ago with the Agricultural Land Commission CEO Kim Grout and chair Frank Leonard, councillors were empowered when they heard applicants looking for zoning changes or land exclusion cannot go over their heads to the commission if denied at the local level.

“What I heard from them is they view us as partners (in managing agricultural land) and what we want is important and it does matter,” he says.

Despite that view, Basran and five other councillors at a public hearing Tuesday voted in favour of the application to rezone the property allowing the owners to install 10 RV sites on a farm on KLO Road as a part of an agritourism operation.

It was a change of position for the mayor who had earlier voted against the application in a failed effort to stop it from even going to public hearing.

“I changed my mind. He had the support of some growers in our community, the Casorso family who have been farming here for a century and the Sperlings, another successful agricultural family,” Basran said. “The fact that what is now a hayfield will soon be intensely farmed is worth 10 RV sites on marginal land.”

The newest RV park will join 15 others on agricultural land in Kelowna.

City bylaw officers in the past have had problems with some operators enforcing the terms of the tourism accommodation bylaw which does not allow year-round accommodation or hook up.

To contact the reporter for this story, email John McDonald at jmcdonald@infonews.ca or call 250-808-0143. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.