Photo: City of Kelowna

Kelowna city council got a chance to review and comment on the vision for the redevelopment of the city’s North End.

The final iteration of the plan came to council Monday with visions of up to 5,000 new homes, more parks, pathways, better transportation, more shopping and employment opportunities.

But it lacked one component.

“I’m overall supportive of amendments that have been made and I think it responds to council and the community’s feedback, but I’m still concerned about not identifying a school site,” said Coun. Loyal Wooldridge.

While acknowledging the city does not control when schools will be built, Wooldridge questioned whether there was a way the city could acquire land for a site given the need to plan for transportation routes among other infrastructure requirements.

“Through the thriving urban centres project, we are going to be looking toward strategies like that to identify how we can work differently with the school district and other partners to identify future school sites,” said long-range planning manager Robert Miles.

“When it comes to the parameters we would want to see through our planning processes…we would be looking at things like good transportation access, active transportation, proximity to future development and those types of things.”

The plan itself envisions a 30-year redevelopment of the north end featuring an expanded downtown urban centre, new housing opportunities, expanded parks and new job growth within a mixed employment district within the industrial and Clement Avenue districts.

Miles says the plan has gone through numerous changes over more than three years of study and consultation.

The most recent changes surround the Manhattan Point area where lakefront property is again envisioned for houseplexes with low-rise apartments further east in the neighbourhood.

The plan does speak to possible parkland acquisition on the lakefront but specific addresses are not identified.

Building heights within that neighbourhood would remain six storeys with heights at the mill site adjacent to Manhattan Point are still to be determined.

One addition to the plan is the designation of a retail street which speaks to challenges identified by council and residents of encouraging and retaining commercial services in the north end.

“As part of the amendments to the street character map, Ellis Street between Clement Avenue and Bay is now signalled as a retail street,” said Miles.

“This means new development along that street would be required to have at minimum a commercial, retail component at street level.

“The intent here is to maintain existing commercial character today as well as providing new commercial uses in the future.”

The entire plan and accompanying OCP amendments will go to a public hearing scheduled for April 8 before being adopted by council.