Heritage register
The Kelowna Heritage Register is an official listing of properties within the community that are identified as having heritage value. Search the register below.
The Heritage Register replaces the 1983 Kelowna Heritage Resources Inventory. In 1994, the Local Government Act, along with the community's growth and public interest in the conservation and revitalization of heritage buildings and sites, allowed for the creation of the Heritage Register.
More than 200 properties are currently listed in the Kelowna Heritage Register. For each listed building, a Statement of Significance has been written, indicating why the building merits inclusion. A Statement of Significance provides a description of and identifies the heritage value and character-defining elements of a historic place.
The Heritage Register identifies properties of heritage value in Kelowna and allows us to review and monitor proposed changes that would have an impact on listed heritage properties. Properties listed in the Kelowna Heritage Register have special status and may be eligible to benefit from the following incentives:
- Heritage Revitalization Agreements to vary the City’s Zoning and Subdivision, Development and Servicing Bylaws. This allows the City to consider, on a case-by-case basis, providing property owners with incentives and bonuses such as increasing density, relaxing height and setback restrictions and relaxing parking restrictions, and allowing appropriate adaptive re-uses. In return for these incentives, the property owners would agree to retain and protect the listed properties.
- Special treatment under the BC Building Code, which permits equivalencies to current building code provisions. The equivalencies allow property owners to upgrade older buildings without requiring strict code compliance, while not compromising safety standards.
The Heritage Grants Program, administered by the Central Okanagan Heritage Society is designed to promote conservation of residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural heritage buildings by assisting owners with grants for a portion of the costs incurred in conservation work. Eligible work may include reroofing, window and door conservation, siding and porch conservation, work on foundation and repainting. Any owner with a property listed on the Kelowna Heritage Register is eligible to apply for this program. Interested applicants should visit the Central Okanagan Heritage Society's website for more information.
Buildings listed in the Kelowna Heritage Register can be altered and may even be demolished. However, City Council may temporarily delay the issuance of a permit to alter or demolish a listed heritage building in order to allow time for other development options to be fully explored with the property owner, City staff and the Heritage Advisory Committee.
Inclusion of a property in a Heritage Register doesn’t constitute Heritage Designation or any other form of heritage protection. Furthermore, having a building included in the Heritage Register doesn’t restrict the existing development potential of a property. The property owner is entitled to redevelop the property in accordance with the permitted uses and density of the existing zone of that property.
Requests from property owners to add buildings to or remove buildings from the Kelowna Heritage Register are reviewed by City staff. The City’s Policy & Planning Department will compile background information on the subject building and an evaluation of the building’s architectural and cultural history, context and integrity will be conducted in open meeting with the Heritage Advisory Committee. This process follows the Kelowna Heritage Register Evaluation Criteria.
Following the evaluation, the Policy & Planning Department will forward a recommendation to City Council regarding the proposed addition or removal of the building to the Register. The property owners will be advised of Council’s decision.
The historic place is the two-storey concrete-block Sutherland Building, built in 1907 in a simplified Victorian Italianate style, and located at 339-347 Bernard Avenue in Kelowna's Downtown area.
The historic place is the two-storey concrete-block and brick Morrison Block, built in 1908 at 353 Bernard Avenue in Kelowna's Downtown area.
The historic place is the two-storey brick commercial Knowles Jewellers building, constructed in 1910 at 369-371 Bernard Avenue in Kelowna's Downtown area.
The historic place is the Willits-Taylor Building, constructed in 1913 at 375-387 Bernard Avenue, a two-storey brick building containing two street-level shops and upstairs offices in Kelowna's Downtown area.
The historic place is the three-storey brick Casorso Block in the Edwardian Commerical style, a local landmark built in 1913 and located mid-block at 425-437 Bernard Avenue in Kelowna's Downtown area.
The Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, now Le Centre Culturel Français, is located at the corner of Bernard Avenue and Richter Street in downtown Kelowna. This historic landmark has a steeply-pitched, front-gabled roof with a prominent central steeple and Gothic pointed-arch windows. The Church is situated among six others along Richter Street, forming a religious precinct in downtown Kelowna.
The historic place is the First United Church and the adjacent church hall and Sunday school, begun in stages between 1909 and 1929 in the Gothic Revival and Tudor Revival styles, and located at 721 Bernard Avenue, at the corner of Richter Street, in Kelowna's historic North Central neighbourhood.
The historic place is the one-and-one-half storey wood frame Muirhead House at 763 Bernard Avenue, built in the Queen Anne style in 1910, during the initial development of Kelowna's North Central neighbourhood.
The historic place is the two-storey stucco-clad house, built in 1907, located at 770 Bernard Avenue in Kelowna's historic North Central neighbourhood.
The historic place is the two-storey, wood-sided Leckie House and its landscaped front yard open to the public street, built in the Queen Anne style in 1906 and located at 781 Bernard Avenue, in Kelowna's historic North Central neighbourhood.
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