Moncton Says No To Proposed Parking Lot For Blue Cross Building
MONCTON – City councillors voted seven to four to reject a proposal by Slate REIT, the owner of the Blue Cross Centre, to increase surface parking in the downtown core Tuesday.
“It’s unfortunate that one of your biggest downtown building owners isn’t able to provide for their client base. There will be a cost to that,” said Jim Scott of Trace Planning and Design, who was working with Slate on the plan. “They need to keep people in the building, they have clients that need to expand within the building, they’re not going to be able to offer that.”
Scott said Slate is now in a difficult position and will have to figure out a plan, or it could “possibly lose clients.”
The proposed lot for 365 parking spaces on 20 Record St. was met with resistance when it was presented to the council in April because it goes against city plans to reduce surface parking and allow for denser developments with parking garages instead.
But staff recommended approving Slate’s proposal for five years, with the possibility for extension, because the city hasn’t made progress on those plans yet. The city’s plans also call for exploring options like a parking corporation to manage the development of a parking garage, park-and-ride solutions and others. But Scott says those options don’t currently exist and could take years to implement.
Jeremy Kaupp, a director of asset management with Slate, said before the vote that the company planned to invest $1.7 million to create the parking spaces. This would be a temporary solution for an immediate need until the city implements its parking strategy and downtown plan, he said.
“Companies looking to expand in downtown Moncton don’t have the ability to provide adequate parking for clients and employees. The lack of action has left us in this situation where Slate and our tenants are forced to create a parking strategy of our own.”
Slate has a waiting list of more than 500 vehicles at the building which includes the offices of Medavie Blue Cross, Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, the Royal Bank of Canada and the public library.
Kaupp left City Hall immediately after the vote and reporters weren’t able to speak to him.
Citizens, businesses and councillors raised concerns about the plan.
Back in April, Councillor Paul Pellerin said the city “can’t suck and blow at the same time.” It can’t approve a surface parking lot while saying that it wats to reduce such properties downtown.
Anne Poirier Basque, the executive director of business association Downtown Moncton Centre-ville Inc., said approving Slate’s plan would cause a setback and lead to requests for additional parking exemptions to rise 10-fold.
“One of our biggest concerns with the request from Slate is that the feasibility of the construction of a parking structure will take a step back. The city must work with this developer and developers in a similar situation to come to a temporary compromise while long-term solutions are achieved.”
Lise Ethier and Alex Arseneau came with about a dozen other people to also voice their concerns Tuesday night.
“We are saying more parking is more carbon. More carbon is no good. It’s not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem,” Ethier told reporters. “It’s not finished we know that. But we are glad about what happened tonight.”
“We can’t keep business as usual,” Arseneau added. “[The council] declared climate emergency on the same day that they couldn’t refuse more parking. So we just wanted to make sure that they were going to act responsibly to the declaration that they voted [for] unanimously.”
Arseneau says he hopes the city will work much faster to implement its downtown and parking strategies, “at the same pace as climate change.”
Mayor Dawn Arnold told reporters the city doesn’t want any more surface parking lots in the downtown core but will be “very happy” to discuss a multi-level parking garage. And she’s not worried that the move will push away businesses from the downtown area.
“If you want a city to work it has to be dense, it has to be vibrant. You want people living in it, working in it and playing in it. And in order to get there, we can’t just be parking lots,” she said. “It flies in the face of everything we’re trying to do to take a lot like that and put another parking lot.”
She says Moncton remains a “car-obsessed” community. But there are alternatives to parking lots, like 12-hour street parking arrangements, incentivizing carpooling, biking, buses, or solutions that utilize apps.
“We are at that critical point that if we continue to put little bandaids like this in place, we’re never going to get to the point where we either go up or change mindsets.”