111: Kelowna's Unique Approach to Funding It's 2026 Billion-Dollar Budget with City of Kelowna's Doug Gilchrist

00:00:00 Taylor Atkinson

Welcome back to the Colonial Real Estate Podcast. I'm your mortgage broker host, Taylor Ackman. And I'm your real estate agent host, Macklin. Didn't mean to cut you off there, Taylor. Starting this one off well. Oh, we are capitated today. Yeah. Just finished an awesome show.

00:00:10 Matt Glen

an awesome show. And mostly because like I just got humbled with how little I know about how the city operates. But yeah, Doug Gilchrist came on the show and like such a good guest. Yeah, he was ready.

00:00:22 Taylor Atkinson

He was ready for our questions. Yeah, everything.

00:00:25 Matt Glen

everything. Like we're... I know.

00:00:27 Taylor Atkinson

And it was broad ranging. It wasn't even like, we're just going to stick it on one topic. We just asked him everything we could think of. Some people say we're really good at interviewing.

00:00:36 Matt Glen

Other people say we're terrible because of that. But he was a great guest because we just went up on different tangents. I mean, we covered everything from new development sites, homeless mental health, budget. The city budget just came out and I did not realize where the revenue was drawn from or even the fact that Kelowna owned the... Largest municipal airport in Canada. And yeah, just really, really cool stuff. So definitely tune into that. To continue on speaking about budgets, federal budget was passed November 17th. Really the only thing that like we wanted to highlight there that we don't really know how it's going to play out exactly. But finally, the GST rebate has been more or less confirmed. We'll see as transactions close how clients get that rebate back.

00:01:24 Taylor Atkinson

It just grinds me that it's a rebate. I just can't get over it. It's just like carefully. Like, just be an exemption so that we don't have to pay it. Like, when do we get paid a rebate? Like, just whenever the government decides to mail you a check?

00:01:34 Matt Glen

I mean, technically, I think the lawyer, thank goodness we have an amazing lawyer community here. The lawyers will stick handle this. They'll ensure clients, you know, access the rebate in a timely fashion. But in terms of lending, we still have to prove that clients have access to those funds to close, which is, like, ridiculous. We've made something helping the people to have enough money to pay for this.

00:01:51 Taylor Atkinson

something helping the people to have enough money to pay for this. I don't, it just seems weird. Maybe it'll get ironed out in the next few years. I like the idea of it. It says one word, just change it to exemption from rebate. Totally. Yeah. So something else that I always want to highlight this time of year, because when you're speaking with clients,

00:02:03 Matt Glen

else that I always want to highlight this time of year, because when you're speaking with clients, first time home buyers, and that's why kind of GST came up is the first home savings account. So many people. don't have the first home savings account set up is essentially like a blend between an RSP and TFSA. As long as you're registered, you get the allocated $8 ,000 annually, and that just collectively builds year after year. So like it's the end of 2025, get that account set up because that's going to carry over to 2026. And if you do both years, you get a $16 ,000 write off, you know, to your personal taxes. So super powerful tool for a first time home buyer. If you don't know anything about it. reach out i'll walk you through it taylor loves talks about tax stuff it's free money from the government you know and the nice part about this is you don't even have to contribute to it you just have to have the account registered it's like the opposite of the gst the gst is like pay for it and then we'll give you the money back first home savings account is like first home savings account don't pay for it and we'll still give you the money like it's just insane your passion about tax information is like the top three reasons why i like you bro So I love, I don't even, I'm scared to ask what the other two reasons are, man.

00:03:14 Matt Glen

Yeah. I'll give it to myself,

00:03:16 Taylor Atkinson

to myself, but.

00:03:17 Matt Glen

Yeah, please do. I know it has nothing to do with hockey. I can guarantee you that.

00:03:22 Taylor Atkinson

Hustle harder than anyone on our team. You're the hustler. Oh, yeah. Because everyone knows the puck's already iced.

00:03:28 Matt Glen

already iced. I'm still skating for it, you know?

00:03:29 Taylor Atkinson

for it, you know? Need to learn the rules. Oh, man. I love it. This was a great episode. Honestly, you're kind of still buzzing from it. It's a good one to kind of near the end of the year. And we have a few good ones lined up for the new year, too. So looking forward. Tons of good ones.

00:03:43 Matt Glen

Yeah. The only other thing I wanted to highlight going into 2026, obviously, there's going to be a lot of conversations of like, where's the market going? Is the spring market going to be here? Is now the time to buy kind of thing? What I've been kind of telling clients, and I'm not in the position to give advice, like I try and. stay away from that. But I do is like, I think we have a runway of time to buy. I don't think, you know, the spring is going to come and there's going to be this flurry of activity and people are going to miss out on that quote unquote bottom. I did have one client recently that was like, you know what? They're upsizing. They're moving from a home to obviously a more expensive home. And they said they're going to hit pause because they think the market's going to drop another 50 to a hundred grand on the properties they want to buy. I was like, if you're so confident that you think it's going to drop, why don't you sell your house and rent for a year? Like really double down, you know? And this is just me being a bit of a jerk, but it's like, I don't think you're that confident because otherwise you would sell. So my communication to people right now is I think there's a great opportunity to buy. I think specific to asset class in the condo market, you're probably going to see that opportunity for the next 18 months, 24 months. Like it's, it's there. It's saturated single family homes though. Like. If you're looking at buying a single family home, I do not think the market's going any lower. I truly believe if you can be approved to buy something you want to be in right now, go for it.

00:05:03 Taylor Atkinson

So we actually talked to Doug, not about this exactly, but he was talking about what's being built in Kelowna. And 10 years ago, it was 80 % homes to buy, like fee simple homes to buy and 20 % rentals. And this year is 80 % on 90 % rentals and other part of homes to buy, which are not single family homes. That's... townhouses fourplexes infill condos so like well probably not that many condos but townhomes and infill and some single family homes so they're just not building single family homes at the same rate as they're building condos there's going to be a scarcity of fee simple product out there yeah big time well especially single family homes yeah if you're trying to upsize now's the time if you're just trying to get into the market i think there's flexibility on a timeline but uh

00:05:39 Matt Glen

simple product out there yeah

00:05:41 Taylor Atkinson

big time well especially single family homes yeah

00:05:44 Matt Glen

you're trying to upsize now's the time if you're just trying to get into the market i think there's flexibility on a timeline but uh Yeah. If you think the market's going to drop, sell your own then. Do it. I dare you.

00:05:57 Taylor Atkinson

It's true though. Like if you think the markets, if you're certain the market's going to drop, obviously you get out now and wait for it to drop and rebuy in, but I don't know. Yeah.

00:06:05 Matt Glen

Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll just jump into the show because yeah, Doug was just such a great guest and yeah. Another thank you to the city of Kelowna. We've had on multiple city of Kelowna guests and they've all been amazing. So appreciate you guys. They have all been amazing.

00:06:17 Taylor Atkinson

you guys. They have all been amazing. They all come back too. So it's a, Taylor and I are doing something right there also. Yeah. All right, guys. This show, like every show, is sponsored by Century 21 Assurance Realty. We just acquired executives' property rentals. So we are like going hard in the property rental management. That is a big part of Century 21 Assurance Realty now. So we are not only growing in geographical locations, we're all over the interior, growing in Kelowna, Burnin, Kamloops, Kootenays, Cruston. We also are doing the same thing with property management. So we are a... brokerage on the up. So if you are a buyer, seller, investor that looking for a property manager or a brokerage to call, or if you're an agent looking for a brokerage to hang your hat at, I think we're the right one. Enjoy the show, you guys.

00:07:02 Matt Glen

Okay. Doug Gilchrist, thanks for coming on the show, man. How are you doing today?

00:07:06 Doug Gilchrist

Fantastic. First day of snow, but it looks at things out there or very close to it. So winter's here and we're cruising along in the city.

00:07:14 Taylor Atkinson

I think I just heard a big cheer from Big White hearing you say that.

00:07:17 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, a bit of a delayed opening, but thankfully there, I think today's opening day. So I'll have to check the hallways and see who's around.

00:07:25 Matt Glen

Can you just give us a quick background on yourself? Like what is the CAO for city of Kelowna and yeah, what's specifically your role there?

00:07:32 Doug Gilchrist

So CAO, chief administrative officer or city manager, as many people call the job. So I'm council's single employee. I report to council and the rest of the organization reports up to me through my senior leadership team. Yeah, I've been here 22 years with the city almost and almost eight years as the CAO or the city manager. And it's a blast. Being able to do what we do in city building in Kelowna is like just one of the best jobs there could be. We're at an opportune time. But Kelowna kind of maturing and growing right now. It's a ton of fun.

00:08:05 Taylor Atkinson

Yeah. I got to say, like hearing from realtors and obviously in our world, Kelowna, you're running a pretty well -oiled ship there. So it could work. It's got a great reputation.

00:08:15 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we're pretty proud of what we're doing and some of the things we're doing that are groundbreaking and, you know, winning awards and getting kudos to the staff that are putting so much time and passion into it. We're really, really excited about it. I know in your world, we're going through a tough cycle in real estate, but we're doing what we can to support the industry for sure.

00:08:34 Taylor Atkinson

Well, you said cycle. We're all used to it. Ups, downs, beauties are here for the ride. So we're making the most good. It'll come. Exactly.

00:08:40 Doug Gilchrist

good.

00:08:43 Matt Glen

With some kind of recent information, you were just talking about getting a budget approved. Do you want to highlight kind of anything interesting in the budget coming out?

00:08:52 Doug Gilchrist

Sure. I mean, there's lots of exciting stuff in there. For the most part, we try to make sure we're investing in the things that people are talking about, right? The things that people are calling us about, they're asking for, they're getting into the council's priority list and make sure we're investing in those things first. Public safety is top of the list. So we're putting 10 new bodies into public safety, four in the RCMP. four into fire and two into bylaw to try and bolster those areas to get a handle on the challenges we have out there on our street. And I think we're turning the corner. You know, things are improving in certain areas if you actually look at the data. You know, we're hopeful on that front. Tons of money going into infrastructure. you know we started building the new parkinson rec center a few months back we broke ground and that's going full steam ahead that's our biggest capital project in history actually the parkinson rec center rebuild and alongside that we're building three community centers one in rutland one in glenmore and one in the mission two of those will have daycares two of them will have full -size gyms in them tons of community space the rutland will have a community kitchen so really Cool distribution of new amenities for our community and tons more hardcore for sport community as well. Those are pretty exciting.

00:09:58 Matt Glen

Where does the funding come from? Do you guys get grants provincially, federally for that as well, or is it mostly drawn out of our? our taxes.

00:10:05 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, I think this is kind of a misconception about how we're funded. So thanks for bringing it up. City of Kelowna is a bit unique compared to many communities. We have a very low reliance on taxation. So our operational budget, we just tipped over a billion dollars to run the city for 2026. Only 20 % of that is funded from property taxes. The rest is from own source revenues, meaning fees, grants, reserves, partnership funding, that type of thing. So yeah, we get a little bit of money from the province and the Fed. depending on how successful we are at applying for grad programs. But we're relying more on generating our own revenues and trying to, you know, take some of the burden off the taxpayer. In comparison, there are communities in BC that are more than 75 % tax reliant. We're the flip side of that.

00:10:51 Matt Glen

That's awesome. And I guess like historically, is that kind of always where we've been? Like, have we been a pretty, I guess, net cash flow? Not always.

00:10:59 Doug Gilchrist

always. It's a very purposeful trend. You know, we have generated revenue through things like our own dark fiber system that generates private money. We open our box office platform, selling tickets throughout Kelowna generates some revenue for us. Certainly our airport is self -funded. Our utilities are self -funded through their fees. We've been in a probably a good financial position as a city for a long time. And now I'd say we've moved into like a pretty enviable financial position. We have done very, very well on our investments. And then we use that investment income to offset taxation as well. And it benefits everybody by trying to keep taxes low. For the last three years, we've been the second lowest tax increase of any community in BC. And I expect that trend to continue.

00:11:42 Matt Glen

Wow. You said at the beginning of the show, like how exciting, like what a cool job to. make decisions on infrastructure like the airport or you know i think matt wanted to talk about like hotel locations and asset allocation like acquiring some of these properties yeah so i guess the big one is the city bought the property right behind like you bought the marina and

00:11:55 Taylor Atkinson

so i guess the big one is the city bought the property right behind like you bought the marina and a bunch of lots around that. Like what was the idea? What's the plan with that?

00:12:04 Doug Gilchrist

The vision, I don't think for that site has changed. This council, the previous council, the vision is still to have a major flag hotel there. Higher end, higher class hotel in their downtown. I mean, it's an A location. We expect to have an A tenant. But it wasn't materializing. Current market and the current ownership group, they were struggling to get it off the ground. Unfortunately, Westcorp was a great group to deal with, and they took a good run at it multiple times and just came up against some difficult roadblocks with COVID and the changing marketplace and things like that. So we believe that getting it into our hands, we can take a bit of a different approach, an international marketing approach, and attract a developer, a financer, and a flag. They can ultimately get that vision into reality. So we bought the marina. What's currently a parking lot is the primary site and an office building just up on Queensway, a little bit further that West Corp owned. Yeah. We bought it at market value. The intention is to have a three to five year hold and then make sure that during that period, we're doing our diligence with getting it out to market in the right hands to build that hotel that we're looking for.

00:13:09 Taylor Atkinson

So are you planning on holding onto the land and like just finding an operator, a hotel operator to develop it? city going to be part owner of the hotel or how do you envision that at this point the deal structure is not clearly understood it depends what the submissions are that come in through a an rfp type of a process but uh likely disposition you know we may not dispose of the land immediately we may you know vend that into a bigger development deal and then transfer it a bit later on in the process to help the advance the development

00:13:17 Doug Gilchrist

this point the deal structure is not clearly understood it depends what the submissions are that come in through a an rfp type of a process but uh likely disposition you know we may not dispose of the land immediately we may you know vend that into a bigger development deal and then transfer it a bit later on in the process to help the advance the development But ultimately, yeah, we'll transfer that back out to the private owner.

00:13:41 Taylor Atkinson

I'm assuming it's going to play off the site around the mill. Is that they're going to kind of mutually benefit each other? Yeah,

00:13:47 Doug Gilchrist

we think there's a fair bit of capacity in Kelowna for additional hotels, some conference, eventually convention, but certainly some conference space that will complement what we have today. You know, the Grant Hotel is a fantastic hotel, great location, good amenities, and it has conference space. But the larger conference need more than just that downtown for sure. I know the Tolko mill site plan envisions a hotel there. I know we're just directly adjacent to the mill site. There's some land owned by Argus where they envision a hotel there. We think this site as well. So I think our downtown in the long run can handle certainly two, three more hotels without any challenge.

00:14:26 Matt Glen

Yeah. And I mean, talking about conference centers as well, I know the Woodfire Bakery site like that building. Obviously, I don't think the city is involved in that, but they're talking about building a fairly large conference center there, I guess. To me, it seems like a lot of hotels, but obviously the data supports that you guys have capacity. What direction like are we trying to go for, you know, in 10, 15, 20 years from now as like a. you know, where our economics are? Like, are we still trying to be a tourist town, obviously? Yeah.

00:14:51 Doug Gilchrist

So moving to major events and being a destination location, you know, it takes the infrastructure. You've got to have the pieces in order to attract. And sometimes it's a build it and they will come type of scenario. But what we're seeing now with, you know, Skate Canada, Memorial Cup, the BC Lions coming to town, you know, BC Summer Games will be right on the heel of that next year. The Briar in 25. These are major international events that have put us. on the map in that world. And there's people knocking on our door. So we know that we have to make sure the facilities, the beds, the amenities that people are looking for are here. So we're building towards that for sure.

00:15:29 Matt Glen

I mean, it kind of segues a little bit into like the short -term rental legislation. I know it's currently, you know, the city's had conversations with the province, but I guess, are you guys also then seeing a benefit that, hey, if there are... you know, three hotels in the downtown core, then that would kind of alleviate this hot topic. Like it wouldn't be such a an industry where maybe people are looking to invest in? Yeah,

00:15:54 Doug Gilchrist

so council is going to have to debate that, make a decision on policy. From my perspective, there's room for both. Maybe not in the form that we used to have, where it was in every neighborhood and creating, you know, some disruptions in the single family kind of neighborhoods. But for those projects that were built to accommodate and support short -term rentals, what used to be called our old C9. tourist commercial zoning like around or aquas and places like that yeah you know those are probably the ones we're going to recommend that they get an exemption and that they'd be allowed to have short -term rentals subject to the strata i mean the strata ultimately will decide if they want it in their building but we will likely be making a recommendation to have some of those projects approved for an exemption and then the province has to make a decision ideally the province could make that decision a little more accelerated basis we'd love to see may 1st so that for all these major events that are coming next year you know we have some options for people that are visiting i was going to just ask because gavin do is in victoria like talking about they can't change it until the end of november or something and he wants to accelerate that so obviously there is a bit of support from you guys for what he's talking about down there

00:16:48 Taylor Atkinson

was going to just ask because gavin do is in victoria like talking about they can't change it until the end of november or something and he wants to accelerate that so obviously there is a bit of support from you guys for what he's talking about down there

00:16:59 Doug Gilchrist

Oh, yeah, for sure. I think what he's proposed makes total sense. Really, he's just talking about a timing change. Legislation is there already for exemptions, so long as we meet the test for vacancy rate, which we expect we will exceed that. When the data comes out, I think maybe within a few weeks, actually. And when that data comes out, then we can go to council, apply for the exemption, and then hopefully negotiate an accelerated approval timeline from the province and not have to wait till November of next year.

00:17:25 Taylor Atkinson

You guys had a bit of a change of heart, because when the... Provincial rules came out. You added a few more on top of that for City of Kelowna. What happened? Was it just public outcry or was it the economy or like what made you change your mind on that?

00:17:37 Doug Gilchrist

A little bit of everything. And I'm not sure I'd categorize it as changing our mind because we won't go back to what we had many years ago where it was just allowed everywhere. Council put those restrictions in place for a reason, and the complaints were through the roof in terms of neighborhood disruptions that were happening. You know, stag, stagettes happening every weekend all summer long in some neighborhoods. It's just not tolerable, right, for some people.

00:18:01 Taylor Atkinson

Happened in my neighborhood. A bunch of neighbors were pissed.

00:18:05 Doug Gilchrist

So we won't go back to that, I'm quite sure. So it'll be a more thoughtful allocation of where short -term rentals are appropriate, the types of buildings they can be in, the neighborhoods that they can be in, and so on. So I wouldn't say it's a complete change of heart, but we recognize that it is a challenge for some people who need that revenue to pay the mortgages or what have you. And it's also an important piece of the tourist economy, have those options available. People have just gotten used to having that broad set of options. On the flip side, we also don't want to have it proliferate too much and have an impact on the hoteliers that have built infrastructure and employ people and so on. It would strike a balance, I guess, a political answer, but we get a strike.

00:18:46 Taylor Atkinson

Well, it does make sense to allow the buildings that were built for this, at least have the choice now, I guess, the strata, like you said, the strata will still have to vote for it, but they're built with this in mind, kind of makes sense.

00:18:56 Matt Glen

With that said, with our local economy, maybe you have very good insight, but we've kind of spoken to a vast collective... guests on both sides of the fence, right? And we have some that are small business operators expressing that their business is down quite a bit because of short -term rentals or fires or like a, you know, compounding effects. And then we have other people that are expressing quite the opposite. Where are you guys seeing it from a city standpoint?

00:19:22 Doug Gilchrist

The city's still growing. People are still moving here. We're still issuing building permits, development permits. We're seeing our business licenses increase. It's moving in the right direction. It's just at a slower pace than people were accustomed to. And unfortunately, you know, we see... Fairly dramatic swings sometimes in the economy and the real estate industry. In my 20 odd years here, I find that Kelowna bucks the trend a little bit. We don't see the dramatic swings that you see, particularly in real estate, like in, say, Toronto and Vancouver, you know, falling off a cliff. Ours have declined, but not to the same degree. So as a really attractive place that I think is well positioned, hopefully seen as being well run, financially stable, we'll buck that trend a little bit. and come out of the other side of this hopefully sooner than others. Our airport's a perfect example of that. Coming out of COVID, our airport was the fastest growing and fastest recovering airport in Canada, where this year the airport's going to grow at about 9 % passenger traffic. Wow. Our busiest year on record, our busiest month ever was in August, and we might eclipse that in December. So there's lots of positive indicators that Colonus is on a great trajectory.

00:20:31 Matt Glen

This is probably a tough question, but do you know why the growth is so fast at the airport? Obviously, capacity is growing in terms of what it can handle, but are people traveling away from Kelowna for vacations more, meaning our economy, we have disposable income, or is it mostly tourists coming in?

00:20:47 Doug Gilchrist

well we're seeing growth on both sides but the domestic traffic certainly is up and our team works really hard on going after new routes you know it's not a passive approach that when an airline comes to us we'll accommodate them we're out there pounding the pavement working with the airlines trying to develop new routes direct wherever possible or to major hubs like la and seattle places like that so we can get the international people up here And remember, you know, Canada is 40 % off for everybody in the US right now. So it's, it's pretty attractive place to come ski and go to a winery, get a hotel, rent a boat, right?

00:21:21 Matt Glen

Yeah, very much. That's awesome. I didn't realize it kind of came from the city down. Like you guys are involved in, in going out and drumming up that business for the airport.

00:21:29 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah. For clarity, the airport is owned by the city. It's the largest municipally owned airport in Canada. So they report through me and council oversees them. We have an airport advisory committee where we invite people from all around the region to sit at the advisory table to make sure we're serving the entire region. But it's, yeah, owned and operated by the city.

00:21:46 Taylor Atkinson

Okay, so Doug, Taylor and I have a hockey team. We run a hockey team and we're going to take our team on a destination tournament somewhere. I wanted to go to Nashville, but the team have vetoed it because there's no direct light. So if we can get a direct light to Nashville. There you go.

00:21:59 Doug Gilchrist

There you go. That one sounds like it's less about hockey and more about the party.

00:22:03 Taylor Atkinson

Yeah, exactly. Oh, listen to Petro Music 2 as a byproduct.

00:22:06 Matt Glen

Well, to be clear, we're like 2 and 11 right now. So yeah, we're not about the hockey. I don't think we're going to win the tournament, but you know,

00:22:11 Taylor Atkinson

think we're going to win the tournament, but you know, like, it'll be fun.

00:22:14 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, there's a lot of directs that people would love to see or see come back. Hawaii is one of the most popular requests I think we get. But yeah, there's plenty of them. As the airline industry sort of matures and comes back from the turmoil they went through, you know, directs is certainly on our radar.

00:22:30 Matt Glen

It's kind of coming full circle from, you know, like that's what you're talking about when. The city has investments that are doing well, that's generating income, and therefore you guys can reinvest it. Like, is the airport like one of the main investments to generating that revenue then? The airport certainly is supporting other industry.

00:22:42 Doug Gilchrist

airport certainly is supporting other industry. I mean, for us, we have a healthy development industry. We have a healthy film industry, which is growing like crazy right now. Tech and innovation industry and AO supports that as well. For us, it's making sure that we have the pieces of the puzzle in place to help influence those industries. Because we're not an industry, right? We want to support the industries. But where we can stimulate economic development, like bringing in major events, I don't think people realize how much economic development that supports. Like the two BC Lions games that are coming in, we're going to be building a festival around that. And all through the week, you know, it's a Canada Day week. So we're going to have a massive festival related to those two games. And the economic development formula, the national formula that we use for forecasting economic development for major events, suggests that that's going to be upwards of $70 million for Kelowna in one week. So you think of different ways you can influence economic development. This is a pretty direct way of getting money into our economy and supporting local business. So major events is something that this council has highlighted and we're going after it in a big way.

00:23:50 Taylor Atkinson

And we just had the CCMAs, which were very successful, weren't they?

00:23:54 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, that was just under 20 million. We did a post event analysis, almost 20 million bucks into the economy for that week that they were here. You know, by all accounts, it was pretty successful. I heard a lot of people say, why do we go anywhere else in Canada? Can't we just come back here every year? So it gets my boat.

00:24:09 Taylor Atkinson

Yeah, I'd like to.

00:24:12 Matt Glen

In your position, how do you quantify success? Is it mostly generating revenue? And I guess second question to that would be like, what levers do you have access to pull on? Is it going up and getting those events to come in and then reinvesting in the infrastructure to then? get bigger events and like it continues that way there's a few different things i mean we actively go after them you know really solid submissions to go after these events like the memorial cup was a great partnership with the rockets and memorial cup committee great videos hlers like a really cool partnership and when we went after that we knew it was gonna be pretty hard to say no the quality of that submission that everybody put together collectively so yeah we could be proactive and go after them we have to have the facilities

00:24:29 Doug Gilchrist

a few different things i mean we actively go after them you know really solid submissions to go after these events like the memorial cup was a great partnership with the rockets and memorial cup committee great videos hlers like a really cool partnership and when we went after that we knew it was gonna be pretty hard to say no the quality of that submission that everybody put together collectively so yeah we could be proactive and go after them we have to have the facilities You know, look at the facility and say, yeah, that thing's going to work perfectly for us. So if you look at what used to be called the Island Stage, now I guess it's the Peninsula Stage, Waterfront Park there in front of the Grand. When we rebuilt that, we built it on the advice of Live Nation and we talked to them about, you know, what size of venue, how many people is the sweet spot for this location? What does the stage lead to look like? You know, the sound system, the electrical, all that kind of stuff. Access points for security. all of those things so when we built that or rebuilt that we designed for the marketplace you know live nations now got us on the radar and they will populate that as best they can working with our local promoters and so on and we can put between three and five thousand people in there and do a beautiful outdoor concert in a venue that you know second to none yeah just even sitting there without a concert going on is amazing very cool

00:25:42 Taylor Atkinson

just even sitting there without a concert going on is amazing very cool All right, Doug, I want to talk about the rail trail and the tent cities around it. The Clement connector is going to go through to, where does it go, to Highway 33 or around that area?

00:25:56 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, so the Clement extension has been envisioned for many, many years. I think we pulled out an official community plan from 1985 that showed kind of a dotted line on the transportation section of that map to go through there. So we think 40 years is long enough. It's time to build it. Unfortunately, it's a very complex infrastructure project and very, very expensive, right? It's got a major gas line. We got riparian areas. We got creek crossings, big cuts and fills, retaining walls, you name it. So we're well into the design for that section. The first piece goes from Spall to 33, 33 to McCurdy, and then McCurdy out to the airport eventually, all the way through UBC. Super important piece. It will support not just... goods movement people movement but you know cycling and and hopefully an alternative mode of transportation down the road whether that's self -drive autonomous mini buses or an lrt or whatever that might be down the road i want to make sure we're protecting for that because you think of the connection to downtown and there's going to be 15 or 20 000 people in our downtown in the future and those nodes around midtown ubc the airport that's going to be a major spy of traffic So yeah, it's pretty cool. It's exciting to be part of and it needs to get done.

00:27:08 Taylor Atkinson

Yes, because I guess to bring this back to the homeless people, like what I hear, obviously, this is just totally anecdotal. It's just because of the rail trail where it isn't, it's basically private. Like at night, there's nobody there. It's kind of easy to set up the tents and stuff like that along there and even downtown and down into the industrial part around Hollywood there and like. Do you think this will help to have more of a spotlight and open it up a bit for all the traffic? Or like, what's the plan with this tent cities? Is it just to move them around some while so they don't get comfortable? Or what's the plan there?

00:27:37 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, I mean, there's no silver bullet to this issue. It's a complex thing that kind of plagues communities all across our country and the U .S. There's a lot to this. We could spend an hour just on this topic, I'm sure. But in short, you know, we need to manage the on -street impact. We need to get people off the street and into some form of housing so they can be successful, you know, in recovering and whatever it is and get back into contributing to society. In the interim, you know, we have a designated location where people can camp and we manage that to great expense of the city. And we're obligated to that. By legislation, we have to have a place where people are allowed to camp if there's not enough places for them to live indoors. And that's the case in Kelowna. It's very clear cut. So we have to have that location or have a location. And we've been successful in recent times in moving lots of people out of there and into the tiny homes that we've dealt with in partnership with the province. We've had about 115 people, I think now, or 118 people that have moved out of those tiny homes and gone into permanent housing. Some of them, you know, have gotten a job. Some of them have filed a T4, you know, like it's working. Maybe not as quickly as everybody would like. But that's the nature of a complex issue in our society. But we got to keep at it. Ultimately, we want to get people out of that corridor, into housing, into services, into treatment. And for those that are unwilling to go, into mandatory care. Our council has been very vocal about that. And we've been pretty clear that we think that's part of the solution. There's some folks who just absolutely are a harm to themselves and a harm to others and need to go into mandatory care. So we're pushing hard for that too. It's a multi -pronged and complex issue, but I think we're doing the right things and we're going to try and accelerate it.

00:29:22 Matt Glen

Sorry, was it provincially or federally mandated that you guys have an allocated outdoor space for tents?

00:29:29 Doug Gilchrist

Court decision. Court decision. It was a Supreme Court decision that required that you have to have one on public land so long as there aren't enough beds, shelter beds, for someone to go to. So there's more people on the street than there are empty beds, then you have to have a space for them to...

00:29:45 Matt Glen

to habitat. Okay. Then I guess just to clarify on my end, if there were enough beds to, you know, be sufficient to house those people, you guys wouldn't be mandated to have that outdoor space, like pending the court would approve it.

00:29:57 Doug Gilchrist

I know we didn't need to go to court. It's just, let's say we had 50 people on the street and we had 80 beds available. Then we could tell people not to camp in any location in our city. It would be illegal, contrary to the bar law, and they would have to be moved into those spaces.

00:30:11 Matt Glen

Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm really enjoying talking with you. There's a lot of new information for me here. Like I'm blown away by this stuff. I had no idea. And then you said it's trending in the right direction. Like I guess from a measurement standpoint, do you guys measure like police incidences or like people, like you said, like T4 jobs, like healthcare, like how are we measuring it?

00:30:32 Doug Gilchrist

We measure as much as we can. You know, data is the way to make our best decisions and our best investments. So, yeah, we do point in time counts, how many people are on the street, how many people are in our shelters nightly, how many people have gone into our tiny home communities and moved out into permanent housing. We have a lot of data on this. We have calls for service to RCMP, bylaw, fire, overdose incidences, you name it. We have data on all of that. In some cases, you know, they fluctuate. But through the changes we made to operating the outdoor sheltering site on the rail trail there, you know, we made some significant changes recently by putting fences around it and having it more controlled access and better security and so on. The number of police calls and bylaw calls and the money associated with that has gone down dramatically.

00:31:21 Matt Glen

Yeah, and I guess this might be a bit of a tough question, I guess, but what would be the... best investment you guys have or will be making in the next couple of years to help reduce like mental health issues or homelessness where are we allocating funds to is it the housing is it mental health counseling so all of the above we have outreach programs through interior health you know try and get people into counseling or treatment or addiction treatment so you it's not one or another for sure but i believe that collectively one of our best investments could be mandatory care

00:31:39 Doug Gilchrist

all of the above we have outreach programs through interior health you know try and get people into counseling or treatment or addiction treatment so you it's not one or another for sure but i believe that collectively one of our best investments could be mandatory care As a province, we need to get that in place. We need to get people in there. It's not humane to leave them out there on the street doing what they're doing, and it's not fair to the rest of the people that they affect, the businesses and society. So we need to invest in that and get them into mandatory care and treatment, in my view. Some of the people that are remaining out there on the street, we tend to house the houseable, if you can follow me, that people that are capable of being housed are capable of recovering and living on their own. We take them first, and then we leave the folks that are unhouseable on the street, and it just gets worse for them, worse for everybody that they impact. So we've got to deal with those folks, and that may only be 15 or 20 or 30 in our community. But we're now at that point where we've got to... deal with those folks. So mandatory care,

00:32:36 Taylor Atkinson

care, is that like a new concept that's just kind of becoming acceptable? Because I heard Wab Canoe in Manitoba talking about this and like getting cheers from talking about this. And it just seems like when I heard this, I was like, why haven't we always been doing this? Was it just a toxic thing to talk about until recently?

00:32:54 Doug Gilchrist

I think it's actually an old concept that became unpopular for various reasons that we stopped doing as a society and that we realized that that was a mistake. And we need to bring it back in a humane way, a compassionate way, but that it needs to come back. I mean, there's thousands of people who used to be in this type of care in BC that aren't anymore. And we see them out on our streets every day.

00:33:17 Taylor Atkinson

I agree with you. I don't want to talk about the whole show on this, but I just have one thing where my wife and I went out for dinner. This was last year. So it was in the middle of winter, it was freezing. And we just had this person that was just like doing a totally unnatural stance. Like it was freezing. And I just looked at my wife. I'm like, who does this help? that he's just here like this. Is he benefiting? Is it business benefiting? Are we benefiting? Like who is benefiting by just not getting this guy into some kind of care, right? So I just kind of, I agree with you too on that. I just want to tell that story.

00:33:45 Doug Gilchrist

I think most people, when you sit down with them and have a deeper conversation about it, we generally agree that it's necessary and we need to start putting money into that.

00:33:54 Matt Glen

Yeah, I agree. To kind of get back into real estate, because we are a real estate show. I mean, we talk about lots of different stuff. Selfishly, like as an investor, as someone that is interested in the industry here, what is an exciting neighborhood, project, development, site, location? Like I'm thinking more on a residential side of things. And I think your daughter is a successful agent as well, right? I've seen her transact some homes. So yeah, on a like more residential side of things, are you like... North Glenmore is really kind of, we've got some cool plans out there or we're doing more permitting in the mission. Like where are you seeing more developers being interested? I know like, you know, purpose built rentals have been like huge lately and there are sites everywhere. Are you guys seeing at a city level, like single family homes are kind of coming back in or is it still purpose built rentals or like condos, like condos have been struggling right now. So do you have any information on that?

00:34:46 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, sure. I can get into that. First of all, my wife's going to love you for saying that, my daughter.

00:34:52 Matt Glen

Oh, it's to your wife. I'm sorry.

00:34:55 Doug Gilchrist

Well, there you go. She'll love it or I should be offended one or the other. I don't know.

00:35:01 Matt Glen

Hey, I'm a mortgage broker. I don't know real estate agents.

00:35:05 Doug Gilchrist

Merry Christmas. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, there's a couple of key spots to kind of highlight. I mean, the Tolko site, the mill site downtown is probably, you know, once in a lifetime opportunity to build something. Truly special, right? Like 40 acres on the waterfront, probably one of the best pieces of real estate in Western Canada. So that's really exciting. That's coming in for rezoning in January, probably a public hearing in February -ish. And then hopefully they'll be off to phase one not too long after that. So to me, that's the most exciting place in the city for the future residential development. Of course, it'll have commercial as well, hotel, waterfront parks, transit terminus, you name it. It's going to be everything. And we're super excited about working with the... the Thorlixson family and the whole art development group on a real partnership approach to getting that done. It'll build out, of course, over many, many years, but, you know, get the ball rolling, get the first piece in the ground. north glenmore is another one there's an area structure plan being developed right now for north glenmore that could see you know 15 20 000 residents over the next 20 or so years out there 20 30 years out there council will wrestle with that decision on the area structure plan sometime next year but what i've seen so far it looks really good it'd be exciting area to develop you know with them being around the airport and university and you know, right on Glenmore road, the whole Glenmore recreation park being developed there. It's going to be a real cool node out there in Glenmore between the kind of in that little valley. So those are the kind of the two highlights I think that are emerging and are pretty exciting for the next few years.

00:36:38 Matt Glen

Yeah. I did reach out to Ryan Smith. I was like, Hey, when you guys are ready to, uh, break the news on the Tocal mill site, like we want to talk. Cause that is such a cool piece of dirt out there. Like, yeah, it's incredible.

00:36:50 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, it's been fun to work with the developer and the landowners there. They're really good folks. So the outcome of that process and the project kickoff when people see the plans in, I guess, probably in January, there'll be a lot to be excited about.

00:37:01 Taylor Atkinson

That's awesome. So one last topic is the purpose -built rentals. So there's a ton of buildings, as Taylor mentioned, that are purpose -built rental. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Is it going to continue? Do you like the CMHC financing program that's bringing all these on? Or like, what are your thoughts on that?

00:37:14 Doug Gilchrist

Yeah, so many, many years ago, we were about 20 % rental and 80 % fee simple for sale, like ownership housing in Kelowna. And we made some policy shifts. We made some changes to the OCP, the permanent growth boundary, moved towards infill housing, incentivized rental, which some incentives we still have in place to get more rental built. You know, the REITs and the likes of investors took notice of that. There was a market for that, particularly in the Okanagan, and it sort of took off. And now, you know, fast forward 10, 15 years, we're now the opposite. We've been building 80 % rental and 20 % home ownership for the last few years, and we're starting to push towards 90. So I think it's becoming towards the other end of being out of balance, and we need to strike a different balance. And I think that's where... Places like the Glenmore sector plan will see more homeownership type of product built, we hope. Perhaps the condo market will rebound after not building a lot of for sale condos for a while. I like to see that rebound a bit. Strike a better balance because we know that homeownership in BC and in Canada is a goal for most people. And we hope that we see more of that stuff built. reasonable price point it's a big equity builder for a lot of people too right so we do want to see some more homeownership and perhaps a better balance than we're seeing in the last five years i always knew that purposeable rental in the last few years was you know gaining a lot of popularity but that's a pretty big big weight on that side well it's the only thing that makes sense that the number is pencil like you and i talk about this every day only thing that comes close to penciling so it makes sense that's just what's happening i've absolutely like loved speaking with you i am naive to

00:38:38 Matt Glen

always knew that purposeable rental in the last few years was you know gaining a lot of popularity but that's a pretty big

00:38:44 Taylor Atkinson

weight on that side well it's the only thing that makes sense that the number is pencil like you and i talk about this every day only thing that comes close to penciling so it makes sense that's just what's happening i've

00:38:53 Matt Glen

absolutely like loved speaking with you i am naive to the city in terms of like how active you guys are. Like this has been super educational for me. Like, thank you for coming on because yeah, I just wasn't aware how proactive you guys were about getting out and getting business and it just benefits our community massively. So yeah,

00:39:11 Taylor Atkinson

I appreciate the work you guys are doing. I agree. So like when I said earlier that you guys have a great reputation, it's true. Like everyone I talked to because I do a lot of work in Burden, like country south and like Kelowna is just way better. So I appreciate that. It's a bold statement, Matt. Wow. I stand by it. So you had a great job.

00:39:29 Doug Gilchrist

He used to do business in Vernon and Lake. Yeah, no kidding.

00:39:34 Doug Gilchrist

We'll take it.

00:39:36 Taylor Atkinson

Yeah, no.

00:39:36 Doug Gilchrist

It's been a pleasure, fellas, and happy to come on anytime. I love talking about our city and making sure people have the facts and the real true understanding of what goes on. You know, there's a lot of assumptions that get made and stories that get told. Often it's not true, right? So yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Enjoyed it.

00:39:52 Matt Glen

Welcome back anytime. Yeah, have a great holiday season and we'll have you back in the new year for sure.

00:39:57 Doug Gilchrist

Right on. Thanks for the iPods.