The Westcorp hotel and conference centre will no doubt be a game-changer for the downtown Kelowna landscape, but developers have gone back to the drawing board and will now once again need city approval due to major changes to the initial plan.
READ MORE: $65 million hotel and conference centre proposed for downtown Kelowna
The 24-storey project was approved by Kelowna city council in 2014, which already pushed the limit of the city’s height restrictions of 19 storeys. Now developers are looking to build even higher, proposing a 32-storey building, adding condominiums and a restaurant to the top floors.
“The project will include 174 hotel rooms, 49 residences, a conference centre, restaurant and coffee shop next to Kerry Park, retail opportunities in the lobby and on Water St. and a 16th floor public ‘sky-restaurant’ and culinary venue,” according to a Westcorp news release.
Westcorp formally submitted its new design application to the City of Kelowna Thursday.
“We have to be approved by council, then we have to build a presentation centre which we hope to be ready to go the moment we get approved,” Westcorp’s Gail Temple said. “As soon as we hit our pre-sale requirement, we will go in the ground.
“We would like to be in the ground in a year.”
READ MORE: Westcorp hotel gets green light
The cost of the initial project was slated at $65 million. The new design is now budgeted at $130 million.
Along with wanting to build higher, developers are also looking to go underground — changing plans for above-ground parking.
“One of the biggest things for us was improving the functionality of the hotel and that was achieved by putting the majority of the parking underground,” Westcorp said. “That pretty much drove everything.”
Construction was supposed to start on the project in March 2016, but that didn’t happen. A month before shovels were set to hit the ground, Westcorp said some elements of the design were still being finalized. There were also concerns with the risk of high water table levels, which pushed plans back to the fall.
READ MORE: Construction of downtown Kelowna high-rise hotel delayed
When fall 2016 came around, the project was delayed yet again. Design revisions were again the reason for construction being held off.
There are numerous other proposed changes to the development. You can view a full list of those changes in this document:
https://www.scribd.com/document/357142585/Westcorp-Hotel-Aug-2017
Assuming council approves the proposed changes, developers expect the project to wrap up 30 months after building begins.