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Kelowna  

Waterfront park theme of charrette

If the results of this week's charrette are any indication of what will eventually happen then a waterfront development in the South Pandosy/Cedar Avenue area will include a lot of parkland.

The two day charrette, which concluded Wednesday resulted in four different design visions.

According to Shane Worman, a member of UDI (Urban Development Institute) and a resident of the neighbourhood the common theme of all four was the entire lakeshore would be park.

"All four options had no commercial development on the waterfront. Everything was gone to the other side of the street," says Worman.

"All the options included the paddling club, in whatever form it takes, on the waterfront. The location and form were different in all four of the schemes."

Worman says in all four concepts the park would stretch across the 11 waterfront lots - the original seven north of Cedar Avenue plus four properties south of Cedar.

"One of the common threads running through was that all 11 lots be considered by this process and I believe the city heard that loud and clear because they did expand our scope of work on the last day to include those other four lots which was not the original intent," says Worman.

"From a staff level they said this looks integral, all the plans are integral so therefore on the second day we were free to plan that. What comes of that I don't know."

Graham Hood, the city's strategic land development manager, says the idea of opening up the entire development area for design consideration came from facilitators of the exercise.

"There was a uniform vision in the room that those lands were intertwined and needed to be considered together. The facilitators came back and said to staff we need to look at things in a more holistic manner," says Hood.

"Based on the way the designs were going - they were in a different scope than we envisioned so it just made sense to look at all those lots."

KLO Central Neighbourhood Association president, Richard Borroughs also took part in the design exercise.

Borroughs, like Worman, was pleased with the outcome.

"It was great to see the citizens come together from across Kelowna with their ideas and to create some great concepts," says Borroughs.

"It was also interesting to see the uniformity we all had on some things such as preserving the waterfront for all of Kelowna. I thought it was a great exercise."

Borroughs says both city staff and ultimately City Council will have some great ideas to look at.

Hood says facilitators will take the designs and the feedback, refine the vision and prepare it in report form to give to staff.

At that point staff and the lead facilitator will report their findings to council.

Hood expects that report to come back to council in late March or early April.

Click here  to view the four designs submitted through the planning exercise.

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