Third 40-plus storey tower proposed for downtown Kelowna

Ground won’t be broken on the downtown Kelowna UBC Okanagan campus for more than a year but developers are already lining up to be part of what at least one of them is now calling the “Downtown University Hub.”

Chilliwack-based Kerkhoff Developments has sent a proposal to City Hall for a 41-storey residential tower on the southwest corner of Doyle Avenue and St. Paul Street, across Doyle Avenue from the proposed downtown Kelowna UBCO campus.

A 46-story tower was recently proposed just down the block.

READ MORE: Another high-rise proposed for downtown Kelowna, this one is 46-storeys high

A 42-storey tower has been approved a few blocks to the south along Water Street and Leon Avenue, although that’s not considered part of the university hub.

A letter accompanying the proposal from Blue Green Architecture devotes a lot of time extolling the virtues of the new building’s massive multi-storey parking podium for 346 cars and 246 bicycles.

“The podium is principally intended to express the nature of the site like a floating stream in front of a contemporary backdrop,” the letter states. “The connection to water occupies the area under the residential tower.”

The parking podium will have a rooftop garden for the use of residents and there will be extensive landscaping with shops fronting St. Paul Street.

READ MORE: Kelowna city council approves massive downtown housing project

An “iconic artfully conceived” sculpture is proposed for the northwest corner of the site, making it “a meaningful reference for the emerging new Downtown University Hub,” the letter states.

The vast majority of the 353 proposed residential units will be one bedroom or studio suites. Only four in the building are proposed to be three bedroom.

The application going to the city is asking to rezone the property to C7, which allows a total height of 58 metres, or about 19 storeys. It’s asking for a height variance so it can rise 122 metres into the air.

“The residential tower, with its stacked balconies, and smaller floorplate is intended to exaggerate its vertical expression as a language on its own that relates materially to the base of the building,” the letter states.

The 353 units require 381 parking stalls but the proposal calls for seven ride-share vehicles, which will reduce that to 346.

The zone also calls for 246 long-term bicycle parking stalls but the developer is proposing 252.

The proposal will have to go to a public hearing for before it can be rezoned.

Kerkhoff Developments is building the two towers at One Water Street, the tallest of which is 36 storeys and will the be highest building in Kelowna until any of these others are built.

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