Quote:
Originally Posted by Table 5
I think the city needs to learn to be a little flexible in special circumstances. Yes, it goes against their anti-parking agenda (which I'm not a huge fan of in the first place), but chances are this project could be a catalyst for improving that entire block.
Instead it will probably remain another craptastic block filled with pawn shops for another decade or two, and then someone will come along who just wants to bulldoze the whole block and we lose some more heritage buildings. Yay.
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Not just a catalyst - it IS the improvement of the entire block - the site includes most of the old buildings on the block, which will be completely restored.
I would say although City staff will recommend a refusal based on the parking policy, I think there's more than enough political will on Council, given the massive public benefit, to approve the project regardless. At least that's the sense I get.
As for the parking policy generally - I think it's worth defending. I don't think it's an "anti-parking agenda". This policy dates back to the 1960s when the city was trying to get its rapid-bus service going (blue arrow) - the precursor to the LRT. Recognizing that an abundance of free parking downtown would not only lead to congestion on finite road capacity, few would take transit unless parking supply was somewhat constrained. Downtown development is only allowed to build 50% of the by-lawed requirement on site - 50% is paid cash-in-lieu to the parking authority to build parking facilities in more strategic locations (like along major vehicular routes close to the periphery of the business core).
When downtown commercial space exploded in subsequent decades supply was limited and prices became high. Calgary's concentrated core, and this parking policy are primarily responsible for having such massive ridership on transit.
Consider the alternative. Without this extraordinarily progressive policy (dating back to the 60s when car was king) transit ridership would be poor and we would have had to rip through innercity neighbourhoods with massive freeways to handle the commensurate amount of traffic volumes.
Now, that's not to say there isn't room to bump up supply downtown (even though roads at peak are already over capacity) to ease prices a bit - I think we should do that (including and especially this project). But, we should consider Calgary's downtown parking policy one of the most effective municipal public policies anywhere, ever.