New owners of $9 million North End Kelowna site bought long term investment

Two properties between the Train Station Pub and the Kelowna Ready Mix plant in Kelowna’s downtown North End have been sold for $9 million.

Central Kitchen and Bar and Central Sports Club (formerly Sunplex Sports Club) operate out of the building at 1155 Ellis St. while the 1166 St. Paul St. property is a parking lot.

The businesses need not fear any immediate need to relocate.

“It wasn’t a developer that purchased it,” realtor Jeff Hancock told iNFOnews.ca. “It’s an operating business that bought it. They have long standing interests in the downtown area. It’s more of a holding property for them at this point. There’s no plans for immediate redevelopment.”

Hancock and Shelby Kostyshen, both realtors with William Wright Commercial, handled the deal as an “off market” offering. That means it was never listed for sale but they approached potential buyers.

It’s across the street from One Water Street but the current city plans call for a maximum of only six storeys there.

The two properties total almost one acre but, potentially, could be consolidated with the two-acre Kelowna Ready Mix site some time in the future, Hancock said.

The selling price was $9 million for properties that BC Assessment valued at $7.7 million.

“It’s a big number but it’s a great piece and these guys have a long-term vision,” Hancock said. “They have other interests in the area so it makes good sense to them from a long term perspective."

It’s also about half a kilometre from the Tolko mill site that is currently in the planning stages for a major redevelopment.

In December 2021, the Mission Group spent $24 million to buy the four-acre former BC Tree Fruits property next to the mill site.

READ MORE: $24M sale of Kelowna waterfront property will trigger hundreds of millions in economic impact

That works out to $6 million an acre.

“The big part of this story is the fact that, when you’re looking at somebody who’s buying basically a redevelopment site for close to $24 million, the value of what’s going to be put on there in terms of improvements is going to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Jeff Hudson, one of the two HM Commercial Group realtors who sold the property, told iNFOnews.ca at the time.

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