While many communities across Canada have a lot of empty office space due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kelowna appears to be bucking the trend.
“What’s happening is there’s a bit of a move from the big city centres to more of the suburbs in the big cities and Kelowna kind of is that,” said Dallas Gray, commercial leasing and marketing agent with Stober Group.
“I mean, the lake is right there, there’s lots of green space, there’s lots of room to move around. Commute times are short so people just want to live here.”
On Wednesday, the Stober Group invited media and city officials to its newest Landmark building under construction in the Landmark District.
“Today is a big celebration,” Gray said. “It’s considered the topping of the tower. Landmark 7 is now standing at its full height at just 300 feet.”
Once complete, the building will be the tallest office building between Kelowna and Calgary.
The new building is part of the growing landmark district — which includes six other landmark towers that provide office space to more than 230 businesses and hundreds of employees.
“Right now, there’s about 3,500 people. And once Landmark 7 is fully built out we expect about 5,000 people in our towers,” Gray said.
The demand for office space in Kelowna is a stark difference from other communities in Canada, like Calgary, where for-lease signs on office buildings are rampant.
In Kelowna, all six landmark towers are fully occupied.
“The demand right now is outpacing our space,” Gray said. “We are 100 per cent occupied.
“That’s the need for Landmark 7. We have existing tenants that want more space and we have tenants from afar, Vancouver and other places that want to come to Kelowna right now.”
One of those existing tenants is an investment management firm, which opened an office in Kelowna last fall.
Wellington-Altus Private Wealth has now leased the top floor of the new building, which will double its current space.
“We are currently located in Landmark 3 and with the incredible growth that our firm is experiencing, we decided that we need to take on some more space,” said Darren Morcom, one of the firm’s portfolio managers.
According to CBRE, a commercial real estate company based in Toronto, the national office vacancy rate is currently sitting at 15.3 per cent — the highest available amount of office space in Canada since 2004.
“Kelowna is such a beautiful place to be and it offers an incredible work-life balance,” Morcom said.
“So even though maybe not everybody needs to work in an office space, most companies still need a location to be in. And so we’re going to have more companies moving to Kelowna and that’s what’s happening. So it’s an interesting phenomenon that’s taking place here.”
The new Landmark 7 building is expected to be ready for occupancy in May 2022.
It will feature a six-storey parkade, a state-of-the-art fitness club and a seventh-floor podium that will be a convention and community events centre.
“It will sit down 350 people in over 6000 feet inside with over 20-foot ceilings and then we have a patio that spills out onto the outside overlooking Parkinson rec centre and downtown Kelowna,” Gray said.