Kamloops City Council has brought in a 10-year revitalization tax exemption for hotels and motels that are redeveloped as multi-family residential or mixed-use buildings.

While both the Kamloops Accommodation Association (KAA) and Tourism Kamloops (TK) have said the move could lead to a reduction in hotel rooms, Councillor Dale Bass said the lack of housing in the City is more important than the need for new hotel rooms.

“I agree with Planner [Eric] Beach and the Mayor that if there is a void in the provision of hotel rooms, that will be filled,” she said. “There are people who build hotels in this city. We need housing. We have said that so many times, this is a way of getting more housing, so I think that is why we need to support it.”

While hotels across Kamloops will be eligible for the proposed tax exemption, it could lead to the redevelopment of the Columbia Street West corridor, which has long been eyed as many properties there are being used as supportive housing and not hotels or motels.

“Providing this tax exemption incentive city-wide to all properties with an existing hotel or motel was seen as appropriate as there are older hotels and motels in areas outside of the Columbia Street West corridor such as Valleyview, the North Shore, and areas within the Downtown East Entry corridor that would also benefit from a revitalization program to encourage the development of much needed multi-family housing city-wide,” Beach said in his report to council.

“The criteria to qualify for this exemption is that the existing hotel or motel must be completely removed and replaced with a new multi-family or mixed-use development.”

As for concerns about lost rooms, Beach noted that hotel or motel could also be built on an existing property that is redeveloped into a mixed-use building.

Councillor Mike O’Reilly too chimed in to say he was in support of the proposal, even though he said it wasn’t perfect.

“This is very much a living breathing piece of what council has been doing,” he said.

“I would much rather see this go through as presented as Option 1 that fail here today so that we can start making progress. If this becomes a bigger and bigger issue on vacancy and capacity, that those lobbying efforts start from that side.”

Added Councillor Arjun Singh, ‘just to the Accommodation Association’s wording that we’re not creating a level playing field, these aren’t meant to create level playing fields, these are meant to incentivize what we want as a community that we’re lacking,” he said.

“So again, we’re not lacking hotel rooms, we’re lacking housing.”

Councillor Denis Walsh on the other hand was not in favour of the 10-year revitalization tax exemption for hotels and motels.

“I think its a panic on this housing crisis thing. We’re going to have a housing crisis and then we’re going to create a hotel crisis. It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.

“We’re a Tournament Capital. We need all kinds of levels of hotel rooms. I just think the market will take care of the issues in the sense that the person will either redevelop the hotel or they’ll tear it down and build a multi family housing, because they’re already zoned for that.”

“I just don’t think we’re doing the right thing as the Tournament Capital,” Walsh added. “This incentive is focusing on mixed-use only and multi-family, so to me, if somebody wants to regenerate their hotel, for me, I’d rather have Option 2, that they are allowed to redevelop a hotel, otherwise, its an unfair incentive to me.”

Mayor Ken Christian voted against the proposal, telling NL News the city can’t be overly generous with tax exemptions for every development.

“When you start handing those out, you merely increase the burden on the residential taxpayer to pick up the difference in terms of waived taxes, so we have to be very purposeful about how we use those tools,” Christian said on the NL Morning News.

“We should not put out there that there’s an expectation that ‘gee, hold off on my hotel development because I think next year or the year after, council will make it tax exempt.'”

Christian also said he would rather see a sliding tax exemption instead of the current model.

“You start it at 100 per cent and over the ten years, go down to 90 80 70 etc., which would be a much better way to do it,” he said. “It would save the taxpayer 50 per cent of the total relief and it would also put the business on notice that eventually at the end of ten years, you’re going to have to pay taxes.”