A place to park

Perhaps it is time to study underground parking?

Council agrees it’s an issue, but don’t like the solutions

A Shire Hall report pointing to possible remedies for the perceived parking ills in Picton, seemingly written to grab attention, did just that at a council committee meeting last week.

Parking tends to be a perennial issue, particularly in the summertime in Picton, and increasingly in Bloomfield and Wellington.

Just as regularly, reports and studies are prepared by staff or hired experts that point to potential solutions—but the trade-offs have tended to be unpalatable or unworkable.

Issues around parking and traffic congestion also tend to peak each July and subside each fall—but two large developments—the Royal Hotel in Picton, and the Drake Devonshire in Wellington—appear ready to test the capacity of each locale to manage an increase in traffic.

Given the increased pressure, County staff tabled a handful of ideas last week, looking for council’s direction—to either investigate further or to abandon.

They include a controversial proposal to pave the former tennis courts at Benson Park, a plan to create a gravel parking lot on municipal property on York Street at the bottom of the hill, and extending parking meters westward along Picton’s Main Street to Lake Street.

Other ideas include implementing paid parking in Market Square behind Main Street using pay and display machines and exploring ‘cash-in-lieu of parking’ schemes to enable large redevelopment projects to pay the municipality to find and create additional parking— thereby enabling such projects to proceed.

But for every suggestion offered in the report, there were folks voicing their objection. Tennis players want to rejuvenate the Benson Park courts, York Street residents want to preserve green space and the grocer at the west end of Main Street worries that on-street meters will push parking onto his lot.

“I don’t know why the Benson family gave that property to the town of Picton,” said Picton councillor Brian Marisett in a spirited rejection of the plan, “but I doubt it was for a parking lot.

“I agree we have parking issues in Picton, but we aren’t going to solve them by paving green spaces.”

Marisett was preceded by residents who expressed a number of concerns ranging from a loss of recreation space, personal safety issues in parking lots and opinions about the workability of some of the proposals.

Some councillors and residents had difficulty with the notion that a developer might be permitted to pay the municipality to create parking spaces.

“Not every problem is solved with money,” suggested Lenny Epstein, a council candidate in Picton.

But engineering, planning and works chief Robert McAuley pointed to a policy gap that needs to be filled in order to enable existing buildings to be redeveloped or density added. The municipality has no mechanism to enable redevelopment projects like the Royal Hotel to acquire the parking that project will need. Left to solve parking problems on their own— the solutions favoured by private sector developers might not align with municipal and community goals.

“One of our difficulties now is our inability to provide onsite for parking for redevelopment projects,” said McAuley. “Without the ability to generate additional parking and the mechanism to determine the cost of creating a parking spot, we are going to have a problem developing downtown. We are at a stalemate.”

Until that point in the debate, it seemed the entire exercise, report and ideas, might be thrown into the dustbin. But McAuley’s explanation persuaded some council members that additional consideration of at least some of the proposals was needed.

“More work is needed,” observed Bev Campbell, departing council member for Picton. “Four years have gone by since we last looked at this. We clearly need more community consultation.”

Bit by bit, the exploratory ideas in the staff report were put back on the table.

Marisett wasn’t yet satisfied. If developers were to pay for the creation of a parking spot—shouldn’t they also bear the cost of maintaining it as well?

McAuley explained that creation of a parking space is relative to the development of additional capacity— that maintenance and the associated costs are related to usage.

“These are two different decisions,” said McAuley.

Finally, Councillor Janice Maynard wanted to extract consideration of Wellington from the report—since many of the recommendations seemed specific to Picton.

“There are parking issues shared by both communities,” noted McAuley. “We need to understand them.”

This prompted South Marysburgh councillor Barb Proctor to ask if McAuley believed there was adequate parking in Wellington—given the imminent opening of the Drake Devonshire.

“I’d prefer not to answer that question in this forum,” said McAuley, seeking to extract himself from an already thorny, soon to be pointier, issue in the village.

In the end, the council committee agreed to further investigation of several of the proposed ideas and to pursue public and business consultation. But it took the Benson Park tennis courts off the table.

If anything, the exercise moved the parking issue off the backburner and thrust it into public consciousness— just in time for a municipal election.