Nov 11, 2024 KelownaNow -see link below
Kelowna Mayor Tom Dyas is now calling the Kelowna Airport a campus!
Plans include a new hotel, although there is a Sheraton and Hampton Inn across the highway not five minutes away.
The plans also include an expansion of the terminal and an expansion of a childcare centre, which Mayor Dyas states it is a step toward addressing “the critical need for affordable, inclusive and high-quality childcare in Kelowna!”
At the airport? Can’t the workers and others access childcare where they live?
Why is this of interest? The mayor is now talking about expanding the airport “campus” to the east on more agricultural land.
Does the city look at agricultural land as vacant land to pave over? What about the preservation of agricultural land for our present and future food security being one of the pillars of the 2040 OCP? What happened to that pillar?
Unbeknown to most of us, the mayor has already been in Ottawa with the City’s senior leadership team to seek funding for this expansion onto the agricultural lands.
The mayor can’t be expected to know everything, so did the planning department inform the mayor that the land east of the airport is in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR)? Where is Kelowna’s Agricultural Advisory Committee on this? Does the Mayor and city staff think it is okay to expand the airport “campus” onto agricultural land? Does Kelowna airport need to be a “campus”? Couldn’t it just be an airport?
Shadow Ridge Golf Course – treed and green space is already destined to be an airport runway and now the mayor wants to expand onto the agricultural land to the east.
Somebody needs to speak up. How can the mayor talk about sustainability when he is talking about paving agricultural land? Something is wrong with this picture.
Susan Ames
Kelowna, BC
