The city issued building permits for more than 2,000 new homes in 2004, blowing the socks off the official community plan's estimate of 1,200. City officials expect that torrid pace to continue this year, Gary Stephen told city council on Monday, adding January's statistics back that up.
The acting manager of policy, research and strategic planning presented the 2004 figures so council can assess how the city is meeting the OCP's future land-use objectives and policies.
Here is a summary of the recent trends: The city issued permits for 1,946 new houses and 109 permits to replace houses destroyed in the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park forest fire.
The average during 2000-2004 was 1,200 houses annually; the OCP forecast was for 1,165. Kelowna was responsible for threequarters of new residential development in the Central Okanagan.
The city's portion has increased from 65 per cent in 2000 to 70-71 per cent in 2001 and 2003 to 78 per cent last year. The city has already exceeded the OCP goal of more multi-family development than single-family dwellings.
The goal was 53 per cent multi-family/ 47 per cent single-family by 2020 based on a split of 45/55 since 1995 (the OCP also used 45/55 for its first five-year period, 2000-05). Last year, the split was already at 55 per cent multi-family/45 per cent single-family. The OCP also has the goal of encouraging commercial, institutional and highdensity residential development in urban centres. Since 2000, 70 per cent of commercial, nine per cent of institutional and 48 per cent of multi-family have occurred in urban centres. The OCP also states the city will focus future industrial development along Highway 97, the North End and Beaver Lake Road area (next to Lake Country). Since 2000, 99 per cent of new industrial has been within those areas.
The total number of square metres of new institutional and industrial varies widely from year to year, noted Stephen, so one or two major projects (or the lack of them) can skew year-end figures.
Residential, on the other hand, shows steady growth from year to year.
Coun. Sharon Shepherd asked if there was a breakdown of the numbers by urban centres so council could see where most people are investing.
That breakdown has not yet been done and there are no figures available on the number of affordable housing units, she was told.
"We should have a benchmark so we can measure it," she commented.
Shepherd also pointed out a favourite topic with her: there was still no public transit to South Mission even though construction is booming in that area.
