A major apartment development proposed for the Shannon Lake neighborhood is on the schedule for West Kelowna’s public hearing on Monday.
The property at 2741 Auburn Road is a vacant 12.4 hectare (ha) lot across from Constable Neil Bruce Middle School.
The applicant is requesting a zoning bylaw amendment to change the property from low density multiple residential zone to the parks and open space zone and comprehensive development (CD) zone.
A staff report says the CD zone would permit a maximum of 401 units in five, five storey apartment buildings.
The parks zone on the prosperity would be about 7.6 ha in size and would be dedicated as parkland.
In 2007, the property was rezoned to accommodate a 220-unit development in the form of three apartment buildings.
At that time, the condition of the rezoning was that a covenant was registered to limit the units to 220 and another covenant was required for the donation of 7.6 ha portion of the site be donated to the city for parkland.
Those two covenants are still registered on the property.
West Kelowna City Council gave first reading to the zoning amendment in February and directed staff to bring back a traffic analysis detailing off-site improvements to mitigate intersection failure and safety concerns.
The project was brought back to council again in July, where council postponed second reading “pending additional information on a proposed cost sharing proposal related to the off-site traffic Improvements,” says a staff report.
In September, council was presented with a 50% cost share between the city and the developer for about $1.7 million of off-site improvements; the zoning amendment was given second reading.
That was later rescinded in late November after staff flagged “several corrections.”
Now, for about the fourth time, council will revisit this proposal during the Dec. 11 meeting scheduled to begin at 5 pm.
