West Kelowna is reporting a record breaking year in building projects.
649 building permits were issued last year, compared to 507 in 2015. 174 of those were for single family dwellings, while 2015 saw only 82.
Nancy Henderson, General Manager of Development Services for the city says they also saw a jump in multiple-family dwellings, which had recently slowed down.
“Since the recession in 2008, 2009 we haven’t seen a lot of multi-family construction in 2015 we saw 50 units where that jumped to 90 units in 2016”.
She says signs point to the trend continuing into this year.
“We are currently processing a development permit for a 240 unit purpose built rental development,” she says “The developer is looking to build 3, 80unit buildings”.
Henderson says they're hiring 2 new staff members and implementing a new software to deal with the increase in workload.
Recently released BC Population Statistics indicate West Kelowna's population grew 2.7% over 2015, the most in the Okanagan, according to Henderson.