Kelowna council agreed to an agriculture land exemption at 4690 Highway 97 N to accommodate a transportation cooridor and relocation of the BC Reigonal Transit facility.
Mayor Colin Basran says if the city hadn't bought the land, someone else would have and likely proposed industrial use. "We speak like it's easy to go find large tracks of land to build a transit facility on. They don't exist. There's a reason why this is the plan, because there isn't an availability. Even try buying a site for a school, ask the school board how easy that is."
Councillors Charlie Hodge and Mohini Singh opposed the exemption. Hodge said, "I can't even get people to build a green roof on their house and here we are prepared to move agricultural land out - which could be better than a hay field. You can't eat cars, you can't eat buses. You can try, but they're not very tasty."
But Councillor Loyal Wooldridge countered the statement. "A really sensitive and interesting discussion today coming down to food security, agriculture versus climate change. We know from our climate change reports that if we don't address transportation differently we're going to continue to warm our earth. So, from my perspective to maintain agricultural land we have to encourage growth from a transportation perspective a different way."
The parcel is 16.2 hectares in size.