Halifax Businesses Bristle At Plan To Charge For Weekend Parking
HALIFAX — Halifax’s business community is pushing back against a city plan to start charging for downtown parking in the evenings and on Saturdays.
Many say the charge will keep shoppers from driving to core retail areas and hurt small businesses that are still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Louise O’Haran owns Kitchen Design Plus on Dresden Row. She also sits on the board of the Spring Garden Area Business Association. She says this is a bad time to introduce new parking fees.
On top of the pandemic, businesses in the Spring Garden area have also been through disruptions from major construction and streetscaping.
She predicts that if new fees are implimented, “it’ll be a ghost town.”
On top of that, O’Haran says downtown businesses in Halifax are always competing against the perception that there is a shortage of parking downtown, even when it’d not true.
“We already live in a city that discourages people from coming downtown,” said O’Haran. “I’ve been here for 10 years. It’s the number one question when people come into my showroom: is there parking? I tell them, yes there’s lots of parking.”
O’Haran also questions how the city will enforce new parking rules and how much that enforcement will cost taxpayers.
“The basic thing is, who’s going to enforce it?” asks O’Haran. “Are we going to be ticketing people, which is what we’re talking about here; ticketing people who are in a bar, or watching a movie, or at a restaurant at night.”
On February 15, the heads of three city business commissions penned an open letter to the city to express their concerns if council goes through with the new parking fees. The letter came with the message that, with all that businesses have been through the past few years, “now is not the time.”
“In our member surveys and conversations, parking is almost always cited as the top concern among businesses and customers. The perception of lack of availability, and concerns about the costs always put us at a competitive disadvantage vis a vis our prime competition, malls and big box parks.”
“Implementing these changes, for the first time, may bring in a modest return for the municipality’s general revenues, but it would come at a real cost to our businesses, and add to the customer perception that downtown is not convenient,” reads the letter, in part.
Sue Uteck is the head of the Spring Garden Area Business Association and is one of the leaders who signed the open letter. She said there was little communication between HRM and the business community about any new parking fees. It caught them by surprise.
“We work with HRM on a daily basis about parking. So this came as a bit of a surprise to us because we were just told it was happening,” said Uteck.
Uteck believes this will create a disadvantage for small businesses that don’t have parking for customers and rely on street parking. Customers may decide to go to a bigger centre where parking is already provided.
“We’ve got businesses that are not recovered remotely from Covid. And you’re creating an unlevel playing field. The family that comes from Sackville to go to the Mooseheads game; are they now going to spend the $10, $12, or $20 in parking? Will there be reconsideration of going to that restaurant on Spring Garden when they can eat on Quinpool [with free parking?]”
Uteck says businesses in the Spring Garden area are slowly recovering financially from the pandemic, but there is still a ways to go, which is why she feels any new street parking fees is ill-timed.
“We’re climbing out, as a whole, but we’re not out of the ditch yet. So this a very premature, complete 360 change in policy.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].