Downtown Parking

Recently, downtown parking has been a topic of discussion at Council. This is always a touchy topic.

Some of my favourite spots to meet friends are in the City Centre and I make an effort to support our downtown businesses. I’m down there frequently. And I don’t find parking a huge issue. I’m almost always parking within a block of where I want to go. I often walk further to get from my car into Costco than I do to get into a downtown business.

But I also get that lots of people aren’t as comfortable with parking in tight spaces as I am. And many worry that they will have to walk far to get to a downtown business. Which leads to some customers choosing to shop, eat or drink elsewhere just because of parking concerns. This has an impact.

I don’t know if big changes are justified at this time. But there might be some tweaks that could be made, especially concerning enforcement in short term parking zones. And as our community grows, change will be needed eventually. It is worth doing some planning for that now. But I think we are still a long way away from paid parking in most of downtown to make sense.

Following is a bit more history and thinking on this conversation.

Please note that this is a personal blog post. And mistakes or opinions stated here belong to myself, not to Council or City Administration

a brief history of downtown parking

Although it contains a construction zone that is no longer relevant, this is a great map showing what public parking exists downtown:

Source: 2021 Construction Communications.

Street parking downtown used to have parking meters. However, they were old meters that had maintenance issues only took coins. Throughout Downtown Rehabilitation, they were removed.

The original plan was to install new, modern meters once the Downtown Rehabilitation was complete. In the new streets, conduit was included to make installation cost effective. But then we had the pandemic with its impact on commercial businesses. Because of that, the conversation about paid parking downtown got dropped. Everyone was just excited to see people start returning to the area!

However: business in the City Center is starting to increase. More people are patronizing downtown. Along with that, for some people, frustration with parking is growing.

last council meeting

Recently, the City was approached by the new owners of 214 Place. They made a request to lease the City owned lot east of their building to designate the stalls for staff and customers of the building. My understanding is that a big motivation for them wanting to lease the lot was enforcement. Spots in this lot are designated as “3 hour parking.” But workers often park in the lot all day by shuffling spots during breaks. 214 Place would like more ability to control the lot to preserve opportunities for people with short errands to park in it.

At the August 26 meeting, Council voted to advertise this lot as a leasing opportunity and to Direct Administration to negotiate a lease agreement for it. 214 Place will presumably put an offer in. But other organisations such as the Downtown Association and adjacent property owners will also be able to make an offer.

Personally, I voted “no” to putting this property up for lease. Before we make a change like that, I would like to have a more wholistic conversation about parking throughout the downtown. That being said: parking is expensive to maintain and the City, with all the factors it needs to consider and requirements for public input, isn’t as nimble as many other entities. So I get why my colleagues opted to make this parking lot available for lease.

After that decision, another decision that I did support: Administration was directed to bring back a report on “parking opportunities, including potential revenue and expenses.” When this report comes back, Council will be able to discuss if any changes should be made to parking downtown. There is likely potential to make changes by next summer.

Some options and my take

Some options I see, and my thoughts on them.

  • Status Quo. We don’t have to make any changes. Personally: I don’t think changes are needed at the moment. But I hope we continue to see growth of people living, working, playing, shopping, and doing business in the City Centre. As growth happens, changes will be needed eventually. I’d like to be formulating a plan now so that people know what to expect, and so that changes can be implemented quickly when they become needed. So I’m very open to downtown parking changes being a current conversation.

  • Build More Parking. We could add more parking spots by developing City lots into parkades. Personally, this is a pretty hard “no” for me if it is JUST about parking. The only way I could see myself supporting this is if it was attached to some sort of larger project. For example: if a new tower was going up that would pay large property taxes and included affordable housing units, but to make it happen the City was asked to help with parkade costs, I’d be interested in considering something like that.

  • Institute Paid Parking: At this time, I’m skeptical of paid parking. There might be opportunity to turn portions of a few lots into paid parking for downtown workers: perhaps if they had a guaranteed spot elsewhere, some would move out of using street parking. But I don’t think it is the right time to be charging customers to park downtown. Although it is worth considering what paid parking might look like in the future. If we ever do get to a point of charging customers downtown, there are a few principles I think are important. Free options still need to be readily available if people are willing to walk a little bit, and thought needs to be put into folks with disabilities. Whatever technology is used needs to meet people where they are at: coin, credit card, and phone payments should all be accepted. And the overall goal should be to encourage people to use parking efficiently by putting a price on it, not to be a big revenue generator.

  • Enhance Enforcement for Short Term Parking. Personally, I would love to see this happen. There are vehicles I routinely see taking up prime street parking all day everyday. They clearly belong to people working downtown, and are sometimes in areas designated for short term parking all day. It’s worth putting more thought into what should be short term and what should be long term parking. And I’d love to see us start doing a better job enforcing short term parking, including not letting people get around short term restrictions by just moving a few feet every couple of hours.

It’s also worth noting two other things we can do support downtown businesses who struggle attracting some customers due to parking:

  • Enhance Transit and Sidewalks: If people don’t want to park downtown, I want to make sure they have lots of options other than driving to get there. This is especially important as more evening entertainment establishments open up and people are looking for alternatives to driving when they are planning to have a few drinks. Making it safer and more convenient to walk or bike downtown and easier to catch a bus is one of the best ways to address any parking issues.

  • Get People Living Downtown: We need more housing in Grande Prairie. While this relies on private investment and other orders of government, housing has also been a priority of Council. As we work on housing, I’d love to see more downtown. People being within walking distances of downtown businesses is the best way to get them to support our City Center.

That’s some of my thinking. As always, I’d love to hear from you.

Are there changes you want to see to downtown parking?

What triggers would you need to see to make paid parking a reasonable change in your opinion? And if we ever do move to paid parking, what would you like it to look like?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

-Dylan

Dylan BresseyComment