Banff politicians want developers who are legally required to provide parking to make sure some stalls are available to the general public on a day-to-day basis.
In a bid to give developers more options and make sure parking is available to visitors in the tourist town, council asked administration to come up with wording to include such a provision in the Land Use Bylaw.
Businesses had raised concerns that another proposal in the bylaw requiring 90 per cent of required parking in the downtown core be paid as cash-in-lieu was limiting their options and seen as a cash grab.
“I don’t want to be quite so restrictive that this is the only option. I don’t know why anyone would (choose another option) because you can’t build stalls for $21,000,” said Mayor Karen Sorensen.
“I would suggest parking may be built if parking is accessible to the public on a day-to-day basis, and I’d even be willing to go as far as saying a significant number of stalls have to be available to the public.”
Required off-street parking for commercial development has been a requirement in Banff since incorporation. A cash-in-lieu provision was introduced for parking in 1990 to generate funds for a parking reserve.
In the last six years, cash-in-lieu payments – which are $21,000 a stall and do not reflect the true cost of construction – have varied annually from zero to $105,000. The reserve is currently in a $119,002 deficit.
The draft LUB proposes a maximum of 10 per cent of required parking in the commercial downtown are to be constructed, while the remaining 90 per cent must be paid in cash.
This provision will not apply to hotels in the commercial downtown district, except for accessory uses like restaurants and bars that are located within a hotel.
Town officials say the Town’s parking requirement aims to ensure visitors have access to parking, and arguably to place a premium on parking stalls which are available to visitors.
But, they say, on-site downtown parking rarely achieves this goal, noting several downtown buildings, such as Town Hall, Bison Courtyard and Saitoh Furs, have all provided on-site parking, but none to few are available to the public.
Darren Enns, Banff’s senior planner, said all of the stalls combined would add up to a Bear Street parkade-sized facility targeted at visitors, whereas now these stalls serve only residents and employees.
He said the proposal to limit the amount of parking provided on-site aims to drive cash-in-lieu towards a coordinated approach to solving parking challenges.
“In 22 years, we haven’t seen any private examples of public parking in downtown Banff,” he said.
Enns said the municipality’s ability to provide parking is also undermined by the fact the parking reserve is in a deficit.
“Our belief is parking is a seasonal, ever increasing issue in the town of Banff,” he said. “We consistently perform poorly when it comes to visitor surveys and I believe the community wants to see us doing a better job with parking.”
Councillor Grant Canning said he had concerns with how the bylaw was currently worded.
“The concern is, right now as worded, it’s going to be prohibitive,” he said. “The perception from the commercial landlords is they think it’s a Town of Banff cash grab – and they say if I can build parking, let me do it.”
Coun. Leslie Taylor said she doesn’t believe requiring anyone building or redeveloping in the downtown area to meet only 10 per cent of their parking requirements on site, and requiring them to pay the rest in cash, is the way to go.
“I think 10 per cent is too low, and that this will encourage larger buildings while leaving the community to pick up part of the tab on parking costs elsewhere, because cash-in-lieu doesn’t actually pay enough to cover the cost of providing a new stall,” she said.
Coun. Stavros Karlos, who was quick to point out he was not advocating paid parking, said the reason the private stalls are not open to the public is because there’s no “monetarized parking” in the town.
“Without monetarizing parking, there’s no incentive to open up stalls because it’s cheaper to keep them closed,” he said.
The majority of proposed parking changes will be made in council’s parking policy, such as deferral of required parking, payment scheduling and assigning cash-in-lieu to the parking and transit reserves or transit projects.
Council is expected to discuss the issue again at its next meeting Monday (June 11).
