Construction on three new Kelowna activity centres begins in new year

Kelowna is moving ahead with three new activity centres in Rutland, Mission and Glenmore.  

The activity centres have been in the works since 2023, but city council approved the final designs at its meeting today, Dec. 8. The city is expecting to put shovels in the ground in the new year.

The total budget for all three centres is $74.8 million, with $16 million coming from the provincial government. The centres are meant to cover areas that are further away from Parkinson Recreation Centre.

The new activity centres and the $250 million upgrade for the Parkinson Recreation Centre are all set to open in 2027. 

Councillor Maxine DeHart said the new centres combined are the biggest project in the city’s recent history, and likely won’t be outdone in the near future. 

“To have three activity centres plus Parkinson is incredible,” she said at the meeting. 

The activity centres include recreation spaces, multipurpose areas with a community kitchen and child care spaces. The Glenmore and Mission centres will each have 91 child care spaces.

The plan is that bundling the centres together makes it easier for them to meet different needs for the city while giving each community a space for activities.

Each centre will have similar spaces for sports and community events, but there will be different components in each one that are meant to compliment each other. 

The Glenmore centre will have a small express branch of the Okanagan Regional Library and the Rutland centre will have a teaching kitchen. 

Some councillors said the variety of uses for each centre went beyond their expectations.

“We had no idea that it would turn out to be so elaborate and have so many multi-purpose uses in each one of these community activity centres,” councillor Rick Webber said in the meeting.