More Parking For The Kitchener Core

We’ve had even more good news for the Kitchener core, with the announcement that the Benton and Charles Streets parking garage will proceed. The location of this parking facility will see employees of the new courthouse walking right past/through Market Square. That’s good news for Parmasters KW as well!

This article is taken from the Waterloo Region Record.

Long-stalled parking garage plan gains speed

Terry Pender
RECORD STAFF

KITCHENER
City councillors are moving quickly to build a 500-spot parking garage at Charles and Benton streets in the downtown.

And all taxpayers -- not just drivers -- will pay for the $15-million garage, now that council has rejected setting up a parking authority to help with the financing.

To speed things along, councillors waived the requirement to seek competitive proposals before choosing a consultant on the project. The consultant has already been paid about $400,000.

The city will borrow $9 million to pay for the garage, which is to have shops at ground level. When interest payments are included, the city's share of the cost rises to $15 million.

The province will kick in $6 million, an inducement that prompted the city to revive dormant plans for a parking garage on that corner.

Plans for the garage at Benton and Charles surfaced after the province announced it will build a 340,000-square-foot courthouse on the block bounded by Scott, Weber, Frederick and Duke streets. It will need 690 parking spaces.

Coun. John Gazzola proposed establishing a parking authority, with the idea of using parking revenue to pay for parking facilities.

"And if we did that, then the users would have to pay for it, and it wouldn't impact the taxpayers," Gazzola said to council recently.

"On one side of our mouths, we are arguing about the environment and how we have to get people out of their cars, and then we are building parking garages for them," Gazzola said.

Mayor Carl Zehr said he, too, would like to see a parking authority. But parking rates are not high enough to bring in the kind of revenue that could support parking operations, he said.

"It has to make financial sense so that it has a reasonable chance of standing on its own," Zehr said.

Coun. Berry Vrbanovic said it doesn't make sense to create a parking authority that would need tax dollars anyway.

The city plans to call for construction bids as soon as possible and hopes work on the garage will begin in November.

Kitchener parking operations have long been heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Parking operations were budgeted in 2007 for a deficit of $1.8 million.

The deficit would increase if council agreed to provide more free parking in the core, which some downtown merchants are now lobbying for.

The province plans to build 290 parking spaces as part of the courthouse plan and is counting on the city to provide the other 400 spaces. City staff say the province could move the courthouse to another municipality if Kitchener doesn't agree.

Construction of the courthouse will start in late 2009 or early 2010. The city aims to have the new parking garage open by November 2009.

The garage at Charles and Benton streets is not the only one on the books.

The city also plans to pay $8.75 million for 250 public spaces on the first level of an underground parking garage on Centre Block, which is next to City Hall. But many of those spaces could be occupied by the faculty and students at the nearby Wilfrid Laurier University graduate school of social work. To attract the school to the core, the city agreed to provide 175 parking spaces for the faculty and students at the subsidized price of $20 a month per space.

The garage at Benton and Charles will be built with no public consultations, something Mark Garner, head of the Kitchener Downtown Business Association, doesn't like.

"We should have been in the loop and communicated with when this was going on," Garner said.

Downtown merchants believe there is a shortage of parking that has to be solved, he said.

The garages at Benton and Charles and on Centre Block should look after those concerns, he said.

Now that councillors have approved those two garages, there is a pressing need for a debate about long-term plans for parking and transportation downtown, Garner said.

"I always thought it would be great to have King Street as an entire, I wouldn't say like the Red Mile in Calgary, but a closed-off street where it's just walking and cafés."

Critics who see adding parking to downtowns as a waste of resources weren't impressed with Kitchener's plans.

"The future is not going to be about car storage," said James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere and a board member of the non-profit Project for Public Spaces.

Cynthia Nitkin, also of Project for Public Spaces, who has spoken in Waterloo Region, suggested a parking problem is a healthy sign.

"It means people want to stop and shop."

But parking shortages are often just a perception, not a reality, she said. In fact, Kitchener's consultants say about 20 per cent of the public parking spaces downtown are empty at the busiest times of the day.

Instead of building parking garages or providing more free parking on the public's dime, the city and downtown merchants should worry more about product selection, marketing, displays, organizing festivals and other programming for public spaces, Nitkin said.

In Canada, Calgary hasn't built a parking garage in the core in more than 25 years. Parkades were built around the downtown, and people can ride the light rail for free in the core.

"Once you start tipping away from the car, a lot of interesting things happen," Nitkin said.

tpender@therecord.com


BENTON AND CHARLES

For 45 years, the land is a surface lot with 81 spaces -- 21 monthly, 60 hourly.

In 2002, city seeks bids for construction of a 525-space, five-storey parking garage on the site. The estimated cost is $8.1 million, and when the lowest tender comes in at $12.4 million, the project is shelved.

In 2003, Kitchener calls for expressions of interest in building the garage with city help. City offers to provide $3 million to $4 million, waive development and permit fees, and co-ordinate parking rates at city-owned lots. No takers.

In June 2008, the province announces it will build a new courthouse downtown if the city provides 400 parking spaces.

June 2008, the city announces a parking garage will go up at Benton and Charles. Public hearings, normally required for downtown projects of that size, will not be held.