This Uptown Saint John Parking Lot Is Now A Prime Location For Development
When Moosehead announced last June that it was going to build a small-batch brewery in the uptown, I remember thinking the parking lot owned by the Saint John Parking Commission at the corner of Canterbury St. and Grannan Lane would be a perfect location. And why wouldn’t the city part with the land for such a great project I thought?
Then Moosehead announced the Water St. location and subsequently pulled the plug on the project (hopefully just for the time being).
Those were just my idle musings at the time; it seemed everyone had their own ideas about where the brewery could go. Well, it turns out the parking lot in question is now available for the right development. The City of Saint John has put out a call for proposals, with a July 21st deadline for submissions.
It’s a prime piece of land, right in the heart of a bustling redeveloped urban core, with neighbours that include Thandi restaurant, Churchill’s Bar & Pub, Picaroons, Locavore cafe, Buckland and Merrifield Gallery, Centrebeam Place, and a newly renovated Historica housing development, and several other high quality bars and restaurants.
In the request for proposals, the city notes that it’s also selling another nearby parking lot at Princess St. and Canterbury. It invites a “coordinated proposal” for both sites. It’s not a requirement for development of either, but the city says it would award “bonus points” for a joint development plan.
There will surely be a lot of chatter over the next month about what is the best kind of development for this site.
An equally compelling question: what will happen to the murals of the “Famous Folk From Saint John.”