Downtown Kelowna will soon be seeing a 104,000-square-foot facility that is being built at the corner of Doyle and Ellis streets. This new construction symbolizes Okanagan Valley city’s transformation into a top technology and economic hub, which may attract more investors.
The building is a $35-million Okanagan Centre for Innovation which is funded by the building's owner, Kelowna Sustainable Innovation Group, and also by the provincial and federal governments.
“It’s a public-private project,” Kelowna mayor Colin Basran said in an interview with The Vancouver Sun. “Some of it is for non-profit, like our tech incubator, called Accelerate Okanagan. It will also have a private component so space will be leased to tech businesses and tech start-ups.”
The six-storey building is inspired by Pixar, Apple and Google campuses, with the goal of making the center the most innovative and entrepreneurial hub in Canada.
The technology sector has been growing in the Okanagan Valley contributing about $1 billion to the economy and has a growth of about 13 per cent since 2010. What contributed to the increase is the sale of Club Penguin to Disney for $700 million, and the Metabridge which is an annual local tech summit.
With this, Kelowna will not merely be known as having an economy that depends on tourism and agriculture since it is already transforming into a diverse commercial center. It was recently announced by the Colliers International in Vancouver that they will be taking over the ownership of a Kelowna affiliate, thus adding four more brokers to the operation.
“The office will evolve,” said Kirk Kuester, the managing director of Colliers International in Vancouver. “We’ll look to grow it and look to add key people … to be able to service an economy that’s very diversified and I think is positioned for a lot of growth over the next 10 to 20 years.”
An additional 3 million square feet of commercial space would be needed to house new business by the year 2030, the city's Official Community Plan estimates said. Aside from that, it would need about 800,000 square feet of new space within the next five years.
RT Commercial Real Estate: Kelowna emerges as a B.C. technology and economic hub https://t.co/kot0nzlDAk pic.twitter.com/OjCgiUjICz via CRE_…
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