Towers done in 4 years?
Image: City of Kelowna
After getting the go-ahead from Kelowna city council last night, the developers of One Water Street said today they hope to start building two highrise towers in downtown Kelowna in just a few months.
The two towers are part of the same development, that will eventually sit at 1187 Sunset Dr., currently home to the downtown “dirt pile.”
They will stretch 29 and 36 storeys high, and go up in what Russ Watson of North American Development Group calls an “unbelievably quick” timeline.
Watson is the managing partner at NADG, the company bringing the project to Kelowna, along with Kerkhoff Construction.
Watson said the towers will be built in phases, with the lag time in between the first and second tower dependant on how quickly units in the building sell.
He hopes construction will start on the first tower “this winter,” and will take about two-and-a-half years to finish.
The second tower won’t take quite as much time, and depending on how quickly they start building it, Watson says the entire project could be done in four years.
A major feature of the two towers will be the three-storey podium they both sit on, which will feature about “a quarter mile” of retail space on the ground level of Sunset Drive, Clement Avenue and Ellis Street.
Watson said nearly all of that retail space— along with most of the rooftop amenities that will sit on the podium—will be completed with the first tower.
Before they approved the project Aug. 29, Kelowna city councillors expressed their desire to see the commercial space used for services that will enhance the community, presumably beyond the typical slate of restaurants that tend to fill up commercial spaces in Kelowna.
Watson said the developers have had “preliminary conversations” with a few restaurants interested in the space, but has also spoken to several smaller business as well.
He said he wants to see a wider variety of uses for the development’s commercial space.
“We have a definite vision of what kind of commercial we want to see here,” he said. “It will be services that will benefit the residents,” he said, specifically mentioning a large grocery store he wanted to see in the building.
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