In this week's episode, host Bob Evans talks to City Planners Adam Cseke and Barbara Crawford about the new Zoning Bylaw.
Welcome to Kelowna Talks, a podcast presented by the City of Kelowna that explores the "why" behind the decisions that shape your city. Tune in for weekly episodes with host, Bob Evans, Partnerships Office Director with the City of Kelowna, as he welcomes guest subject matter experts to explain the processes and decisions that influence the lives of the citizens.
Kelowna Talks - EP 18
Barbara 00:00
We're going to learn where the deficiencies are and we're going to learn where the needs are. And we're going to keep revisiting and keep changing and improving the bylaws to meet the needs of the community. The community is not going to stay static, it's going to evolve. And as it evolves, so must the bylaw.
Zoe 00:13
Welcome to Kelowna talks, where we explore the why behind the decisions that shape your city. Together, we open the curtain and dig deep into current issues, plans and policies that come out of City Hall. Thanks for joining us as we talk about Kelowna, and the topics that matter to you.
Bob 00:39
Hi, everyone. I'm Bob Evans, partnership director of the City of Kelowna and host of our Kelowna talks podcast, I acknowledge that our community is located on the traditional ancestral unceded territory of the Syilx, Okanagan People. Well, we're here today to talk about planning, and specifically zoning and our recently adopted Zoning Bylaw. I feel like we're losing listeners already. But stay with us. I'm sure there's lots of good stuff coming. But it's something near and dear to me and our other two guests and zoning effects citizens more than they realize, basically, this regulates land use and what we can do and what where we can do it in a neighbourhood. And what you may or may not be able to do with your property in very, very simplistic terms. So joining us today we have Adam Cseke and Barbara Crawford, both planners with the city. Welcome, Adam and Barbara...
Barbara 01:24
Thank you for having us.
Adam 01:25
Thank you kindly.
Bob 01:26
So we usually start off with a little tell us about yourself. So Barbara, I'll start with you, how do you like to spend your time when you're not planning our great city.
Barbara 01:34
Thanks, Bob. I'm just going to start with a tiny little preamble of a story. 25 years ago, my husband and I came to Kelowna on a ski vacation. And we absolutely fell in love with the the region, the mountains and the quality of skiing. And we thought if there was an opportunity to come back it would be great place, not a bad place. And as it turned out, a year after that visit, I was presented with an opportunity, a job opportunity straight out of university didn't even think about twice, we packed up our worldly possessions and came out here. And 24 years later, that was a one year contract. 24 years later, we're still here. And now the main reason is because of what the city has to offer the lifestyle and that this is an amazing place to raise a family. So we are an active family. We love canoeing and hiking and biking whenever we get a chance. I myself enjoy running and rock climbing and gardening and I always feel quite connected to the community. So we'd like to give back where we can, I volunteer with various nonprofit organizations, but currently I'm volunteering with Powder Hounds adaptive skiing, who take people with various abilities, skiing at Big White whether they're, adults or children, we adapt to their needs.
Bob 02:46
Oh, nice. Very good. Thank you. Well, we're glad you're here. So you were at the city that whole time?
Barbara 02:50
No I haven't, I I've changed my career several times, but always within a similar type of spectrum. I'm a geologist and I've been in the in the mining sector and consulting sector and contaminated sites and and now with the city.
Bob 03:08
Adam, I know there's all sorts of things in your background and things you'd like to do involving rocks and rings and things like that. Anything you want to tell us.
Adam 03:14
Well, thanks, Bob. Well, if Barb's gonna start with some origin stories, yeah, I guess I get started. Yeah, I do competitive curling and I am trying to get, we have a team this year that went to a few World Curling Tour events. And we're hoping to give it a chance at the Brier this year. So we'll see. See how that unfolds. On my origin story. My grandparents moved to, actually my great grandparents, moved to the Okanagan Valley. And my grandmother came from Saskatchewan and settled here. So we have long roots here in Kelowna. My grandma, before she passed, we always went to the Okanagan Historical Society, used to, you know, sit there told old stories, and my grandfather actually worked for the City of Kelowna, for 35 years. And I have some of his memorabilia for when he was retirement, some continuing on the trend with the family, working for the city of Kelowna.
Bob 04:05
That's a great backstory. Oh, thanks for sharing that with us. So let's get on to our topic today. And I'm just gonna throw these out there. So either of you can answer, both of you doesn't matter. What is zoning and why is it important? Let's start with some sort of basics here.
Barbara 04:20
Yeah, I'll start in and Adam can always, of course, fill in the gaps. So the origins maybe I'll start with, again, the origins, there's a theme happening here. And the origins of zoning was created in order to separate land uses, and specifically those that are conflicting, let's say, industrial versus residential, and overtime that's evolved and the evolution that's included the alignment of uses and alignment of other provisions of a city such as transportation requirements or networks and the zoning itself is a basis for which the city's uses and the growth and dynamics are built on a city plan. And it is also the implementation of the official community plans and other high level plans such as transportation master plan and the housing strategies that the city has. And they they all feed into a document such as that of a zoning bylaw. And that develops into concept or policies into implementation of actual rules and regulations. So that's at a high level. And I think that most of the folks in the city would be interested in what a zoning bylaw does, just so that they understand what they can and cannot do on their, on their property, or their neighbour can and cannot do on their property.
Bob 05:44
Because most of us don't think about zoning every day. So can you give us a little bit of advice, guidance on why people should pay attention to zoning and what it means for their own personal properties and just their own lives.
Adam 05:58
Yeah, I think fundamentally like the purpose of the Zoning Bylaw is to tell property owners what they can and cannot do with their property. And fundamentally that it all those rules and regulations, ascribe minimum standards, whether it's parking, landscaping, building heights, setbacks, all those. Like very important how you interact with the built environment. And all those rules and regulations are derived from policy. And so the City of Kelowna has been engaged in multiple policy updates over the recent years. And this is the logical next step having a zoning bylaw evolution, and it is very important for people to pay attention to what you can and cannot do with your property. We live in the community and it affects us all, depending on whether you live out in the suburbs and the core, transportation, everybody interacts with the built environment.
Bob 06:44
So new. So it's a new zoning bylaw. Can you help the listeners understand what it means by a new zoning bylaw, and maybe help walk us through a few of the key differences that you'd like to highlight?
Barbara 06:56
I'll jump in. And I think start with really recognizing that, and I certainly didn't know this when I started on the project as a project manager, that the city's first Zoning Bylaw was adopted back in 1938. And it was then updated in the early 60s, and it was updated again twice in 1970s. The previous Zoning Bylaw was adopted in 1998. And along the way, really the 1998, which is bylaw 8000, had carried over a number of the rules and regulations from the previous versions. So although there were amendments, and there were new rules and regulations that were brought in to meet the changing needs of the city such as parking or short term rentals. The previous bylaw really was stuck. It represented many previous versions just being carried over. So it became quite evident specially with the new OCP being adopted earlier this year that the existing, at the time existing zoning bylaws, just did not meet the needs and did not align with the policies and a new zoning bylaw needed to be drafted and written. So that was the task that Adam and I had. And a new zoning bylaw was developed in order to align with the new policies and provincial legislation, along with many other city initiatives.
Bob 08:18
And what about the general public the the land development sector? I'm sure everybody had a little bit of a say in this and how did you walk through the modifications and creating the new zoning bylaw? And what were some of the key aspects for you?
Barbara 08:32
The development process of the of the bylaw was quite extensive. We worked on it for a few years. And it involved internal stakeholders. We initiated with workgroups that provided us their insights and their expertise in their respective fields within our own group within our own departments. This was a quite collaborative and involves a project that really had internal and external stakeholders, such as developers and the public that provided us their their feedback and comments through a public consultation and stakeholder consultation process. And many of those comments were taken in and reviewed and woven into the new bylaw
Bob 09:16
So you say it was a two year process or...
Barbara 09:18
Well, the project itself was about a two year process but as I previously mentioned, you could probably say this was probably about 20-25 years in the making.
Bob 09:28
So when was the last time we actually did a full redo or is it just been modified over the years.
Adam 09:33
Yeah, it was 1988 like Barb said, was the last one and you know over the years there were updates, are always updates to you know, rules and regulations and to bylaws but there was a need to have a major updates and to some of your questions about some of the highlights and some of the big...
Bob 09:49
yeah, let's get into it! Some of the good stuff. Yeah.
Adam 09:53
One of them was there's been large updates with the Ministry of Ag and agricultural land commission. So there's new rules related to to certain farm activities, and we recreated a new agricultural zone that only applies to the ALR land. So all those agricultural rules are now going to be specified in the new A1 zone. And then everything that was outside the ALR, that was zoned previously as A1, now is this new zone called A2. So it's gonna be a hybrid between agricultural and rural residential. And that, of course, is outside the ALR. And then, some of the highlights that really derive some of the big pieces that are changes were derived from policy that was recently created with the official Community Plan. And the Zoning Bylaw is really just the embodiment and implementation tool for those policy decisions. And so one of them was, we created an urban centre zone per urban centre. And within the official community plan, there were certain building heights allocated throughout all those urban centres. And so there was a density allocation targeted for each building high category within each urban centre. And then, on top of all that there was density bonusing, introduced into this Zoning Bylaw, that would help developers marginally improve their height and or their density in exchange for payments into the public amenities, streetscape fund or an affordable housing fund. Those were the two options that council approved in terms of increases in densities. And these were all derived outcomes from the Community Plan and is in general, meant to provide more consistency, and more expectations of outcomes within these urban centres so that members of the public neighbours, property owners can have a better understanding of exactly what is going to go inside these urban centres,
Bob 11:37
Maybe expand a little bit on density bonusing, because I think that's, you know, something of pretty great interest in the community in terms of lots of controversy in terms of heights of buildings, and density and our ever growing urban centres in the city. So help our listeners understand why we want that and how it benefits all of us.
Adam 11:55
Yeah, absolutely. I guess you can't talk about the changes without what was wrong with the previous Zoning Bylaw. And in our old one, we had a downtown zone that had a really high density. But in our official committee plan at the time, there were there were strict height limits. You know, however, developers, you know, wanting to maximize their property values and maximize the unit yield, according to their density targets would always apply for height variances. And so we heard loud and clear from neighbours from counsel from the official community plan that we wanted to tie building height policy with zoning and density regulations. So throughout the urban centres, you'll see high categories and FARs tied to those height categories. And there were large studies done to coordinate the amount of parking that's typically required with...
Bob 12:40
You did pretty good until you dropped in FAR.
Adam 12:42
Yeah, yeah. So as planners, you can't help but use acronyms all the time. We try our best not to use them. But FAR is standard for floor area ratio, which is a standard for density. Right? It's, it's how much floor area you're allowed to build based on how big your lot is.
Bob 12:58
Perfect. Okay, so let's talk about a couple other different areas. You know, parking is always a big one of concern, bicycle parking, car parking, how did you approach the evolution of us, hopefully spending less auto dependent days? And how that looks at how that impacts our land use and our densities and our zoning?
Adam 13:19
Yeah, absolutely. Like, not only did we learn from the official community plan in terms of policy objectives and outcomes, where we wanted to implement that in the Zoning Bylaw, our planning team also enter Council and everybody else in the development industry learns from previous examples as well. And one good one is, what are some recently approved developments that got occupancy, let's say in the last three or four years, and what we learned is just having the minimum amount of bicycle parking doesn't necessarily incentivize the use of those bicycle markings. So if you, for example, have a three or four storey parkade, but your bicycle parking is located on the top of that parkade in storage facilities, like in areas of the parkade it's very inconvenient for people to ride their bicycle down the ramps, so what they tend to do and our expectation was to use the elevator, but now a lot of stratas are banning bicycles in the elevator because especially during the winter or, or wet months, it's constantly maintaining the elevators. And you know, that was seen as a big barrier to increase incentivizing bicycles. So we put in a rule that they must be within the ground floor or within one storey of the ground floor to sort of encourage you know, that modal split that the city has between active transportation and vehicles, but at the same time, it's not that we're not sympathetic to vehicles. You know, we also heard there was lot of complaints about compact stalls and compact stalls were not very, this is vehicle stalls. They weren't very functional, they could only fit you know, extremely small vehicles and essentially council agreed that we got rid of that. So no more could you do 10% compact stall, so we increase the size of the parking stalls. So We were kind of fine tuning and getting our regulations in order to meet the current market demands.
Bob 15:06
I'm trying to look out when we look at an OCP. And we visualize the future of our community and, again, trying to incentivize people to take alternative forms of transportation. Does the Zoning Bylaw address that? Or do you have to just address current situations and then, again, probably do an amendment at some stage to look at how we either tighten or loosen those parking requirements. And of course, there are some municipalities now in Canada who have taken out parking requirements completely under their zoning bylaw. So that's a pretty radical move. And it just, yeah, just always interested in parking.
Adam 15:35
Yeah, absolutely. I would say that what's really important with parking rules and zoning rules in general is that they generally follow from policy and from the official community plan so that if you lead with regulations that are, you know, outside the scope of what your elected council and the desired of the community is, you're generally pushing a rock uphill. So we'd like to, you know, follow policy and so the direction you know, through official community plans and very community plans that would inform this, this why we set up an urban centre zone per urban centre, so that our you know, long range policy group can go in and do an urban centre plan per urban centre, and fine tune these parking regs, depending upon, you know, when you do a complete study of how close commercial how close active transportation is, you know, how what the usability of vehicle parking rates, they may vary between urban centres, and that fine grain policy work then helps them form rules and regulations in the Zoning Bylaw.
Barbara 16:36
And maybe I would also add to that, as far as the Zoning Bylaw itself is a is a living and growing document. It's an evolutionary document. So when the project proposed these these new parkings, or other regulations, it's understood that over the course of the time, but the life of the of the project or the the bylaw itself, and once it's implemented, we're going to learn where the deficiencies are, and we're going to learn where the needs are. And we're going to keep revisiting and keep changing and improving the bylaws to meet the needs of the community, the community is not going to stay static, it's going to evolve. And as it evolves, so must the bylaw.
Bob 17:10
No, that's good to know. It's good for people to hear, because again, we talk about how we change the official Community Plan policies all the time and our policies of interpretation of it. And a lot of people have to do or don't understand. It's an interpretive document, and it has to be a little bit flexible. Leads me to my next question. So just again, can you help listeners understand the segue between the official community plan, we also adopted a new transportation master plan this year, and where the Zoning Bylaw fits in that hierarchy of plans and how it how it complements the official community plan.
Adam 17:42
Yeah, I'll start with one example the building heights and then we develop density rules based on those building heights. Another example from the transportation master plan. And the official mini plan is there was a comprehensive study done where in urban centres, which streets or retail streets what streets must have retail or not, or residential above ground floor or on or office must be located in the tower or not. And so all those rules then got translated into all those policy objectives. That all translated into the Zoning Bylaw into, you know, must, depending upon the street character, and all those are all mapped out and are within our either transportation master plan and our zoning bylaw. We're in a unique spot now where we needed to all of our rules are coordinated, especially in our urban centres, where if you've varied parking, or if let's say, if the policy decision was to, you know, have no parking in a certain area. Now, that would affect the amount of buildable area that a developer could do. So right now, a lot of our densities, setbacks, building heights, density, and the amount of parking that's required, typically in those formats are all coordinated. So, you know, if any one of those would change, then you always have to come back and re-edit the Zoning Bylaw. So that's why it's so important that if there is a policy objective, like parking and reducing the parking, that if that's a consequence, then you look at all the other rules that are that interact with them.
Barbara 19:07
Maybe all I'll add is on a much higher level. Those are the sort of the more details but you'd ask how the bylaw actually ties in with the OCP. And that is that simply the the Zoning Bylaw is an implementation tool of the the higher level objectives of the OCP or transportation master plan. And it just basically takes direction from the OCP and conforms with the various policies and and make some policies into into regulations for those who want to understand that the nuance,
Adam 19:36
I guess another important policy that affects a lot of people within the core areas. The city has a lot of importance on that missing middle on having lots of infill housing, and few years ago, the city introduced the RU7 zoning that you could have a four plex on certain core lots and it was really geographically defined. And now with the new official community plan any property within the core area can now go to that equivalent zone which we're calling MF1. It's the infill zone. And so anybody in the core can now rezone to essentially a four flex zone. There is a certain density regulations, but I use four plex as a standard.
Bob 20:16
Okay, it's great segue for a question I have to ask, you're gonna cringe on this one. But, you know, are we seeing the demise of the single family house and what, there's a lot of people that have been in Kelowna for a very long time and they, you know, they're probably justifiably upset, scared. What's their community gonna look like? What, you know, how do you address somebody who approaches you and says, you know, what about single family homes? I love my single family home.
Adam 20:40
Well, I do think there's an important role for single family homes and our official community plan outlines. There's a suburban residential future land use category. It outlines all the suburbs of places like Wilden, McKinley, Black Mountain, Kershner Mountain, The Ponds, Kettle Valley, there are lots of designated single family areas. But within the core itself, let's say within the downtown area all the way to Rutland into Glenmore and towards the h2o Center in the CNC along, Gordon, all those areas are now defined as the core area which, you know, from a policies perspective, the official Community Plan said we need to effectively utilize our resources more, and these are where all of our transit supportive corridors are. And so, yes, the policy and then the Zoning Bylaw has identified those areas as if you have a current single family dwelling, that you know, subject to engineering review, that your property could rezone to a, you know, higher in intensity infill housing zone.
Bob 21:41
Another topic that's pretty hot nowadays is affordability. How does the Zoning Bylaw impact affordability from your perspective?
Adam 21:48
Well, I think from fundamentally what a city, you always have to think of what a city can control and affordability, there's a lot more components in it than just the city can control. We do live in a market economy where we have interest rates, there's certain buying selling that it's outside a municipalities control. And what mostly a municipality can control is approvals, and approvals of new housing. And I've seen in my career here at the City of Kelowna, a lot of projects have been approved, that still haven't been built, you know, even if a bank or financing project ever gets off the ground, even though it's approved last time, it's not necessarily a guarantee that it's built. So I think fundamentally, what any municipality can do, but in city cloning in particular, is keeping to its official Community Plan, and incentivizing housing, affordability through approvals. And we've had a record number of rental buildings built here in Kelowna, over the last number of years, I think I remember going to an event once with a fellow from CMHC. And I think it was 2018 or 2019. And he gave a state of the market update saying, I think that you guys are building too much rental housing, and then came back the very next year, it said, you could have built double.
Bob 23:02
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you have to be dynamic in this marketplace. Well, we're coming towards the end of our time. So I just wanted to ask you, if there was anything that I missed, that you wanted to highlight about the zoning, bylaw, or anything else that's on your mind as two key planners in our city.
Barbara 23:19
Maybe I'll just share something that I learned along the way on this process. And I've been a project manager for a number of years. And it's, I have to say, I've been the public and the private sector now. And I have to, I have to admit that being a project manager of a scope of a project like this is quite fundamentally different. The public sector clearly has a number of stakeholders that are very much interested in and invested in the outcome of a project like this and managing and just finding that balance and meeting everybody's needs and expectations, and hearing everybody and hearing all of those concerns and, and ensuring that the key points are, are included and woven into the project like this is quite different than when when you're looking at it from a public sector or the private sector, I should say. So to me, it's especially when you start dealing with different layers of provincial and legislative requirements and developer in public and internal and it's it's a challenge. But I think we I like to think that we were able to meet all of those expectations. And we were able to bring the document together in a way that today it meets today's the community's needs and addresses all of those stakeholders concerns. And like I said, I mean, this is an evolving document and it can only you know, continue to get better.
Bob 24:48
Adam, any parting thoughts of wisdom?
Adam 24:50
No, Bob, I just want to say thank you for having us and it was a pleasure and an honor.
Bob 24:55
Well, thank you and I appreciate your passion around zoning and Uh, I think a lot of people don't understand the amount of work that goes into a document like this. And thank you, from all of us on our side of the table here to say we really appreciate you sticking with us and getting new zoning bylaw out and we look forward to seeing how that turns itself out in our community.
Zoe 25:22
Thank you for listening to this episode of Kelowna Talks. For more conversations about topics that matter in your community, subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, give us a five star rating and review and share Kelowna Talks with your friends and neighbours. For more information about this podcast and other big community conversations, visit Kelowna.ca/communitystories