Province quietly doles out big cheque for new Kelowna tourist information centre

No press release, no big announcement, instead the provincial government has quietly handed over a big cheque to help fund the controversial new tourist information centre in Kelowna.

The $2.8 million building will be constructed on Kelowna’s waterfront at the base of Queensway Avenue.

Some residents have vehemently spoken out against the location, saying it disrupts the waterfront park space.

Global Okanagan has learned that the provincial government has given Tourism Kelowna $500,000 for construction of the new centre.

There was no official announcement on behalf of the provincial government, which is somewhat unusual seeing that the BC Liberals regularly makes public announcements on smaller amounts.

Tourism Kelowna received approval for the money last march and got the cheque April 5.

Tourism Kelowna chair, Daniel Bibby, said they’ve been waiting on a number of things to fall into place before making the announcement.

“We’re hoping to get the word out shortly. We just got our development permit yesterday. We met with our board of directors this morning. We have a couple of pieces of funding that are pretty important. We’ve got a mortgage approval on the building itself. We’re hoping to have some federal money to announce as well. And then we want to be able to celebrate this with the community,” Bibby said.

The new tourist information centre is located in Premier Christy Clark’s riding. Global Okanagan left her a message. She has not returned calls as to why there was no official announcement regarding the funding. Global also reached out to Kelowna-Lake Country MLA Norm Letnick. He said the province left the timing of the announcement up to Tourism Kelowna.