One of the highlights of the provincial budget that was unveiled today was this:
The [Island Community] fund will be used to help finance a new parking garage in downtown Charlottetown that will be part of a multi-million dollar redevelopment in the downtown core that includes a hotel and condos at the Shops of the Confederation Court Mall;
The developer can not meet the physical parking requirements for this project(s). The Zoning & Development Bylaw allows developers to pay the City cash for each space, if they cannot provide the necessary parking (which is calculated by a formula). Tomorrow, at a special public meeting, City Council will vote to allocate all of the parking cash payable from this development to the Charlottetown Area Development Corporation in order to construct a new parking garage. The City owns and maintains the three current parkades, but CADC will build, own and operate the new parkade, if the resolution passes. This is seen as an attractive proposition because the City’s only contribution is a one-time transfer of the cash-in-lieu paid by the developer. CADC will finance the rest with money from the province.
Also, the City recently received the final draft report of the Downtown Charlottetown Parking Strategy. The construction of a new parking garage is not central to that strategy, and it is clear that a new parking garage will not solve all of our parking woes. I have indicated to Council that my support for tomorrow’s resolution is contingent on the Parking Strategy being substantially implemented, although I will have no guarantee that it will before the meeting.
Where would this parking garage be?
Good question. The process of selecting a site is ongoing. Of the several sites that have been considered, only one is really viable at this point, but it is the smallest (south east corner of Queen & Euston).
If there’s an empty lot, or large surface parking lot in the downtown core, it’s probably under consideration.
Thoughts, preferences, criticisms welcome.
Since this will be of great benefit to the monster hotel being built in the Confederation Court Mall, and since the mall will have to be heavily modified for this anyway, why not build a parkade under the mall? While it is more expensive to build underground, the hotel / mall owners should chip in to make up the difference. This would not waste any of Charlottetown’s available space, and push the ugly parkade and cars out of site.
I am getting tired of “no place to park in Charlottetown’ yet the planning department will not force developers to build underground parking for employees (direct reference to Aim/Trimark and Ceridian buildings) or customers.
A condo I was had in Ottawa had a five level underground parking garage to support fifteen floors of living space. Why can’t we do this here, since our buildings seem to be getting taller by leaps and bounds!
What is the current timeframe to start building this Hotel? Are the condos going to be part of the hotel structure or will they be seperate?
The parking business is not a money maker in Charlottetown. Contrary to what many people seem to think, the parkades operate at or near capacity much of the time except Pownal, which lags a little. But the parkades just barely pay for themselves. The developer in this case is perfectly entitled, according to our current bylaws, to pay ~$750k cash in lieu for parking. If the City said, “You must spend $10 million (likely more) to build underground parking beneath the mall,” the development would never happen. Council was unwilling to build a new City-owned garage, which would have stopped the development in its tracks, but we agreed to direct the in-lieu cash to CADC. Then the province stepped up and filled the rest of the substantial gap, and here we are.
I have mixed feelings about several aspects of this project myself, but I hope this is the end of the parking garage era and we begin to implement some of the excellent recommendations in the Parking Strategy — active parking management, traffic demand management… a more holistic approach.
My understanding is that tenders for the hotel and office building will be going out any day now. There will also be a considerable investment in the Mall itself — giving it a more modern look and bringing it up to standards that are demanded by certain types of retailers. I don’t know where the talk of condos came from. I have heard nothing about that.
I don’t really like the idea of yet another ugly parkade taking up valuable street frontage within the 500 lots area. If necessary, couldn’t the Queen Street Parkade be expanded by excavating for several levels? Cities like Halifax have already seen the folly of spending money on parking for automobiles in the past decade or so. With rising gas prices, the value certainly hasn’t been met – as Charlottetown has no doubt realized. Perhaps the city could purchase a decent fleet of 20-30 buses (similar size fleet to Fredericton) and run them on a 30 minute schedule 12-16 hours per day. This would remove many more cars from the downtown than a white elephant parkade could ever hope to accomodate.
David… We have been told that expanding the Queen parkade upwards is not possible. I assume excavating down would be extremely difficult and expensive, if not also impossible. One option presented to council was to expand the Queen parkade east to University Ave. I indicated I was absolutely completely opposed to that idea. I think it’s absurd.
Since there is AMPLE free, on street parking on Saturdays in downtown Charlottetown, I am assuming the parking spots are for people who drive in from Cornwall or Stratford (etc.) to park their cars while they work. So, again, this seems to be public transportation issue and not a parking issue.
i don’t like the idea of another parking garage. but if it must be done, i hope the designers are encouraged to make it a mixed use building at street level, with some small store frontage or something on the sidewalk and/or, if it can be mostly underground, perhaps even a developed greenspace on top.
It seems that Homberg is going ahead with their office tower on Fitzroy. The tender closes for the foundation on Wednesday the 27 Aug. What I was wodering about was is there any way on line to find out what construction projects are in front of the Planning board. There is this new Motel/Hotel for the waterfront mentioned in the Guardian and of course ONI has a building being discussed for Queen. any others? Thanks
One other thing. The City and Homberg must have come to an agreement on the parkade. any Time line on this.
You’re correct. The Homburg office building is proceeding after we came to an agreement over parking. Specifically, the City passed a resolution committing us to keep the split of monthly to transient parkers at 50/50 in the Queen Parkage. This has always been the case except for a period of about six months after the City sold its parking lot and City staff were using the Queen Parkade. Homburg wanted that commitment before they would proceed with the office building and renovations to the mall.
There have been no developments with regard to a new parkade. That is linked to Homburg’s hotel proposal, which may or may not be moving forward.
Barry, the City posts a list of building permits issued on a weekly basis.
See here: http://www.city.charlottetown.pe.ca/residents/application_fees.cfm
So Homburg will be proceeding with an office building and renovations to the Confederation Court Mall? Is there a new proposal for a Hotel on the Waterfront? Does anyone have any links?