Where did Wilson Street parkade come from?

Posted by Magda
I'm researching an in-depth story about parking downtown (read more on Saturday), and part of what I'm hearing is surprise at how quickly the Wilson Street parkade was proposed and given initial approval. (Council on Tuesday approved the concept of the garage and put aside $400,000 to start planning for it.)

The first time the parkade was mentioned in the Mercury was in John Marsden's running column on March 4. Then, in the March 10 Merc, reporter Vik Kirsch talked to councillors about the need for the garage. The March 14 paper details how it passed through committee, and yesterday's paper how it passed through council. My head's spinning.

Comments

[David Graham]

Indeed. Who are the projected users of this garage? Will it really be local business owners?

More likely, would it not be commuters using the soon-to-be-built and de-parking-lotted nearby transit hub? Going by Barrie's example, a 500-spot lot would last no more than 2 months before being completely filled once GO trains show up (which is only a matter of time) -- and commuters have a distinct advantage over local business owners when picking parking spots in that they will tend to get there earlier.

As one councilor asked, how are we paying for this garage? Was it in the budget just passed a few weeks ago? Is it worth $30,000 per parking spot (city numbers) for this privilege?

Wilson St lot gives me a lot more questions than answers and I've put pen to paper on the matter at http://cdlu.net/entries/20080326.shtml .

Downtown business owners were more than a little happy Tuesday night to have the taxpayer provide them with hundreds of new parking spaces downtown, and I don't fault them for it -- there is a lot of push constantly on to "revitalise" the downtown, but we still seem to be looking to Los Angeles rather than London as our model to do so.

At any rate, I'm certainly looking forward to your article on the matter.

[Magda Konieczna]

David,
To answer your question about who would be the projected users of the garage... according to the staff report, immediate demand for spots in the Wilson parkade would come from these places:
-87 existing surface spots in the Wilson lot
-loss of 20 surface parking spots at city hall (I guess some of these were recreated Tuesday night by council)
-renting out offices occupied by city staff -- 2 Wyndham, 60 Carden, 55 Macdonell -- which requires 96 new spots
-100 spots for the courthouse moving to the old city hall
-loss of 30 spaces when the transit hub moves to Carden

When you add that up, you get immediate demand of 333 spots, which staff have suggested topping up to 500 to make room for future demand.

[David Graham]

Ah! I heard the 333 number bandied about at Tuesday's meeting but didn't quite follow where it came from. Thanks for that clarification!

The need is very much short term, thus the urgency and the suddenness of this announcement, but I maintain that it is an awfully expensive approach to a short term problem without consideration for any kind of long term solutions. I cannot see a 167-spot buffer lasting particularly long without at least parallel investment in transit.