The area around Orchard Park is changing fast, with new mid-rise apartment buildings going up near the mall — but the older single-family streets surrounding it remain squarely carriage-house-and-suite territory.
Written by Serge, Founder, Kelowna Carriage Homes
The neighbourhood around Orchard Park Shopping Centre — Kelowna's largest enclosed mall, at Harvey Avenue, Cooper Road, and Dilworth Drive — is one of the more mixed residential areas in the city. In recent years, Kelowna council has approved several new mid-rise apartment buildings close to the mall itself, including a five-building complex south of the mall and a six-storey, 177-unit building at Dilworth Drive and Underhill Street, part of a broader shift toward higher-density housing near this commercial hub. Surrounding those newer developments, older single-family and low-density residential streets remain typical of the area, with lot sizes and home ages that vary block by block.
That mix means Orchard Park is not a neighbourhood where we can generalize about "the typical lot" the way we can in Rutland South or Glenmore — the honest starting point here is confirming what's actually zoned on your specific street.
On the area's remaining single-family lots — mostly on the streets further from Harvey Avenue and the mall itself — a carriage house or a secondary suite is governed by the same rules as anywhere else in Kelowna, and fits the same way it would on a comparable lot in an adjacent neighbourhood. Properties directly adjacent to or zoned as part of the newer multi-family development around the mall are a different situation entirely, and the carriage-house and secondary-suite rules covered on this page do not apply to land zoned for apartment or multi-family use.
If you own a single-family property in this area, the first step is the same as anywhere: confirm the zone, then measure the lot against the standard allowances.
Single-family lots in the Orchard Park area fall under Zoning Bylaw No. 12375, the same as the rest of Kelowna: a detached carriage house capped at 90 square metres (about 970 square feet), one per lot, not stratifiable, accessory buildings limited to roughly 14% site coverage, and a required additional parking stall at minimum 2.75 by 6.0 metres. See the city's carriage houses and secondary suites page for current detail. Given how much rezoning activity has occurred near the mall recently, confirming your parcel's current zone — rather than assuming it matches a neighbour's older designation — is worth doing before anything else.
The province's Small-Scale Multi-Unit Housing legislation, effective since November 30, 2023, applies to the area's single-family lots the same as it does citywide.
On eligible single-family lots, standard regional figures apply: $350,000 to $550,000 turnkey for a carriage home, $60,000 to $150,000 for a secondary suite conversion, with 3 to 5 months for design and permitting and 5 to 8 months of construction. Proximity to Orchard Park's retail, transit routes along Harvey Avenue, and Highway 97 access are genuine amenities for a tenant, which can support steady rental interest on a well-positioned property.
Financing options are the same as elsewhere: the BC $40,000 Secondary Suite Incentive Program closed to new applications March 30, 2025; the proposed federal $80,000 loan did not proceed in the 2025 federal budget; and CMHC-insured refinancing up to 90% of home value (under $2,000,000) has been available for suite financing since January 15, 2025.
Kelowna renters paid an average of $2,118 a month for a two-bedroom and $1,596 for a one-bedroom in 2025 (CMHC), with vacancy up to 6.4% from 3.8%. With hundreds of new apartment units approved near the mall in the past few years, this is one area where we would flag rising nearby supply as a factor worth discussing honestly before finalizing a rent projection, rather than assuming demand outpaces it indefinitely.
A detached one- or two-bedroom home in the back yard, on the same title.
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Learn more →What your specific parcel is zoned for, and what it allows.
Learn more →Grants, rebates, and refinancing options, current as of 2026.
Learn more →The hillside neighbourhood just north of Orchard Park.
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Costs, timelines, rents, and incentive amounts on this page are estimates from the sources cited, current as of September 2026. Each is confirmed in writing in your free feasibility study. Licensed and insured; documentation available on request.