Members of New Westminster's downtown business community sat down with city council and staff last Tuesday night, hoping to get some clear answers on the future of the Front Street parkade.
But other than assurances from Jim Lowrie, the city's director of engineering, that the downtown parkade wouldn't be demolished in 2012 or 2013, most answers were "incomplete and unsatisfactory," according to business improvement association member Danny Grant.
"There really was no definitive response on any issue other than council giving, I guess, a politically correct statement that they were open to more study before any final decisions were made," Grant said.
Grant said BIA members are mostly worried that the city will tear down the parkade to improve connectivity to the waterfront without replacing parking capacity elsewhere downtown. He said the city seems too eager to remove the parkade without having the rest of its plan in place for how downtown and the waterfront can be connected.
"The impression you get from the city is they want to knock down the parkade because of (the desire to connect) the water-front, ignoring that there's a twolane truck route with a massive amount of volume on it, three train tracks and a large waterfront piece that's owned by a developer," he said.
Grant warned that the city also needs to step carefully to make sure removing parking capacity doesn't put any of the downtown buildings into conflict with zoning bylaws that require minimum amounts of nearby parking.
"If you tore it down, that would make all of those buildings non-conforming with regards to their parking requirements," Grant said.
Also on the list of concerns for businesses was the controversial reverse-angle parking on Columbia Street.
"It does mess up the traffic flow frequently. For anybody who's down here on Columbia Street, most of the delays in the traffic are associated with people trying to get into one of those spaces," Grant said.
At last week's council meeting Monday, council voted for staff to begin drawing up terms of reference for a long-term downtown parking strategy, which should address all of the BIA's concerns and guide the city's decisions, Lowrie said.
"We're not going to take any action on the downtown parkade until that strategy is complete," Lowrie said in an interview Thursday. "It will involve long-term projections of the parking needs for the downtown - probably a 25-year time horizon."
Lowrie said the city's goal is to have 60 per cent of trips downtown being made by "sustainable modes of transportation" - walking, transit and cycling, and that right now, the parkade is only being used to 40 per cent of its capacity.
"It's largely not being used," Lowrie said.
Lowrie said zoning compliance might be an issue if the entire parkade were demolished at once with no replacement parking, but taking down half the parkade wouldn't put any buildings out of sync with current bylaws.
Lowrie said answers to the BIA's questions will come in due time, and that the business community will be consulted in the process.
"We want to work with the BIA in preparing the long-term strategy that council said we could proceed with. There is no conclusive answer at this time until we complete this piece of work," Lowrie said.
