North End.

How North End took shape

Kelowna's North End grew as the city's industrial edge after the CNR arrived in 1925, with packing houses, canneries and the S.M. Simpson sawmill at Manhattan Point from the early 1930s. Modest postwar homes sit beside craft breweries today, and the North End Plan adopted in April 2025 guides the next 20 years.

The North End runs from downtown to the foot of Knox Mountain, named for rancher Arthur Booth Knox, whose land there was sold to the Okanagan Fruit and Land Company in 1906. In the early 1900s the area mixed farms, ranching and recreation. Manhattan Point filled with summer cottages, and Kelowna Brick Works began operating on Bay Avenue in 1905. The big shift came in 1925, when the Canadian Northern line arrived from Kamloops and the industrial district moved north to meet it. By 1930 twenty two packing houses and four canneries lined the tracks. Around 1930 to 1932 Stanley M. Simpson built a sawmill at the entrance to Manhattan Point to make fruit crates, and it ran for close to 90 years, later as Tolko, until closing in early 2020.

After the Second World War, Wartime Housing Ltd. built modest homes for returning veterans, and the City's heritage study calls them perhaps the largest intact collection of their kind in BC. Brandt's Creek was channelled in 1948 and later partly naturalized. Passenger trains ended in 1967, and after rail service on the valley line stopped in 2013 the corridor became the Okanagan Rail Trail. Breweries then clustered along Clement Avenue and Richter Street. The North End Plan, adopted April 8, 2025, sets a 20 year direction. 8 hectare mill site, owned by the Thorlakson family's Holar Developments, has its own redevelopment plan; a 2023 concept showed about 3,500 homes in towers stepping down to the lake.

1. 2025Council adopts the North End Plan on April 8. Source

The homes & their setting

Mostly small lot single and two unit homes, including 1940s Wartime Housing bungalows and 1950s homes, with lakefront homes at Manhattan Point and newer four to six storey apartments. In 2021 the City counted 839 homes, 95.4 per cent of the residential land in single or two unit use, and 38 per cent of eligible lots with a second unit.

Building age, tenure, amenities and permitted uses vary by address. Explore the actual property documents with Elaine and the appropriate specialists.

Places with a story

• CNR Station, 520 Clement Avenue — Built in 1926 after the rail line arrived; a reminder of the railway that made the North End industrial. History source
• Wartime Housing, 567 Okanagan Boulevard — A 1946 Type 1 veterans' home, part of what the City's study calls perhaps BC's largest intact Wartime Housing collection. History source
• Kelowna Brick Works, 930 Bay Avenue — Dates to 1905 and now houses Knox Mountain Metals. History source
• Sun-Rype plant, 1165 Ethel Street — A 1946 fruit processing landmark from the packing house era. History source