Innovative ‘agile’ work space may push buildings to 9 storeys in Kelowna’s North End

Clement Avenue, in the North End of Kelowna’s downtown, has been transformed in recent years with the city’s tallest building near one end, a craft brewery district and new low-rise industrial and residential buildings stretching to the east.

A proposal posted on the City of Kelowna’s website today, Jan. 12, wants to push the building height up to nine storeys at the southwest corner of Clement Avenue and St. Paul Street.

“The proposed design is a nine-storey concrete mid-rise building that will have street accessible retail, two storeys of internal parking structure with perimeter offices, five storeys of commercial, and five townhomes occupying the upper two levels,” states the application from Axiom Architecture on behalf of the developer, 535 Clement Developments Ltd. (the address of the project).

Just yesterday, the city posted an application by the Mission Group for two towers, 30- and 17-storeys, just three blocks to the south. That's where the UBC Okanagan downtown campus will be built.

READ MORE: 2 highrise towers to be 'jewel-like centrepiece' of UBCO’s downtown Kelowna campus

The proposed new building is a block east of the 14-storey Ellis Parc residential tower next to Prospera Place and across the street from the Train Station Pub.

“The building will be owner-occupied and is being purpose-built for an agile (i.e. co-work) office space that will make headlines in the City when it opens,” the application states. “The agile-office exemplifies the shift to flexible working hours and shared co-working office spaces that has been accelerated due to COVID. COVID was an inflection point to this cultural shift in work practices, with predictions for the demands for small business flexible office space to reach 30% of commercial space by 2024.

“Agile work environments create their own local ecosystems and are a draw for small up-start businesses moving from expensive locales, as they fulfill the need for walking-distance office space that economically allows for intermittent collaborating with teams that are largely work-from-home.”

The small size of the property (0.184 acres) means the developer is asking for a number of variances, including allowing the building to be set closer to the street than permitted in the C7 zone it is applying for.

“To achieve an economically viable amount of commercial floor space, several additional storeys would need to be added if the variance to setback is not permitted,” the applications reads. “These additional storeys would have an impractically small footprint and make the building a visual oddity due to its overall slender profile.”

The applicant also wants to reduce the size of the drive aisle in the second of two floors of parking slated for the inside of the building. That floor will only allow small cars and will only be accessed by a vehicle elevator.

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