Residents of Marten Street in Banff are appealing a municipal planning commission decision to approve a 25-unit apartment building amid concerns the development will make parking problems in the area even worse.
At the same time, Banff town council is looking to make amendments to policy C-122 – a contentious policy that allows for fewer parking spots under certain defined criteria to encourage development of rental housing in Banff.
Seven developments have taken advantage of the policy since its adoption in early 2014, but many residents argue parking variances allowed under the policy leads to more people parking on the street because there’s not enough stalls in a given development.
Councillor Brian Standish, a council representative on MPC, said problems around parking with the policy are unintended consequences of what he sees as a fundamentally good policy to deal with Banff’s critical housing crunch.
“It has been very frustrating sitting at the MPC table and knowing this wasn’t really the intention of C-122,” he said.
“I believe in the policy. The objective is good. I don’t want to dismantle C-122, but I want to fine tune and close the loopholes.”
Meanwhile, the Town of Banff has received three separate appeals against MPC’s decision last month to approve a three-storey, 25-unit apartment development, made up of 21 one-bedroom units and four two-bedroom apartments at 431 and 433 Marten Street.
The developers took advantage of policy C-122, and were granted a reduction in required parking from 27 to 18. The development appeal board will hear the appeals on Thursday (Dec. 1) at Town Hall at 9 a.m.
Darren Enns, Banff’s senior planner, said policy C-122 has been in place for two years and has been applied to seven developments, in total creating 115 new rental apartment housing units in Banff.
He said one other project, the Birchwoods apartments at the corner of Moose Street and Banff Avenue, was approved with a reduction to required parking prior to C-122 being adopted. That project actually prompted the policy, so decisions were not made on an ad-hoc basis.
“While little new data has emerged since the policy’s inception in 2014, the policy has generated significant discussion and debate and, as with any piece of new legislation, benefits from the review of council,” he said.
Enns said the premise of C-122 is that any reduction in the number of parking stalls will not displace vehicles onto a public street.
“This is based on a lower limit, or minimum, in the policy of 0.6 parking stalls per dwelling unit, which coincides with census data that indicates that the average apartment in Banff has 0.6 vehicles per unit,” he said,
At council’s meeting Monday during a review of C-122, several residents said they were not against new housing, acknowledging it’s needed in this community. They believe, however, the policy is just pushing more cars onto neighbourhood streets.
Ray Goulet, a Marten Street resident, is concerned with the lack of parking, noting vehicles of visitors at nearby hotels, RVs, delivery vehicles, and private buses are parked on the already busy residential street.
“Parking on Marten Street is an issue and I see people at 40 km/h, and I’ve seen some going a lot faster than that down Marten Street,” he said. “It’s quite a concern.”
Joanne Geyer, a Beaver Street resident, is concerned about more vehicles parking on Moose Street since the Birchwoods apartments were developed.
She believes parking studies done are not thorough enough and should be revisited again in busier summer months.
“I’ve never seen so much parking along Moose Street since the Birchwoods development,” she said.
One of the concerns raised is some developments that have taken advantage of C-122 have ended up charging tenants for onsite parking, meaning apartment tenants park on the street where parking is free.
Among a host of other proposed changes, council has directed administration to return with language for amendments that would state that if the policy applies to the development, the parking would be required to be free and on a first-come, first-serve basis.
“These arrangements could be secured via an agreement between the Town and the property owner which would be registered on the land title,” Enns said. “It would not be possible to apply this to already approved projects.”
Council directed administration to return with language for amendments to C-122 that would create a specific cash-in-lieu fee for developments that make use of the policy of $75,000 per stall, with a two per cent annual inflationary increase.
Council is also interested in gathering more information on parking.
Council has asked administration to bring back a report with options to expand the annual on-street parking monitoring program to include additional residential areas, where apartment housing is a permitted or a discretionary use, during the 2017 service review.
As well, council has asked to have administration include questions in the 2017 municipal census as to number of vehicles per dwelling unit.
“I’m pleased to see there’s going to be some changes to the policy,” said Standish.
