A new report shows there are 275 surface parking lots in downtown Edmonton, and only 30 – about 11 per cent – of them have legitimate permits.
The report is set to be presented to city council’s urban planning committee on Sept. 19.
The councillor for Ward O’day-min, the downtown area, said the number surprised her.
“I knew the number would be large – I didn’t know it was going to be that large,” said Anne Stevenson.
She said while having a place for people to park is important, there’s no shortage of parking downtown and some of the lots can make the neighbourhood feel less vibrant.
“When you’re walking down a block, if you’re walking past vibrant streets and interesting shops, when you come to a vacant lot or surface parking lot, they’re just not that interesting,” she said. “There’s not much life and they’re typically quite empty.”
The report was requested by Ward Metis Coun. Ashley Salvador when she asked city administration to come back with options for accelerating the development of surface parking lots and for phasing out lots without a development permit.
The city said ramping up enforcement against lots without permits is not the best option.
“Options for stricter development permit enforcement are limited, time consuming and costly,” the report reads.
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“Forcing the closure of parking lots is unlikely to compel a landowner to develop a lot. If surface parking lots are closed, it creates vacant land, which could then be subjected to social disorder.”
Stevenson said she thinks that is a fair and realistic assessment of what’s possible, but that it’s worth it to explore other avenues, like fines.
“It is an offence to operate a business without a license, so can we look at it from that perspective and at least recoup some of the value that, if they were properly licensed businesses, we would be receiving as a city,” she said.
The current approach is to act on complaints, which are prioritized based on health and life safety, land-use and climate resilience impact, according to the city.
But the executive director of the Edmonton downtown business association (DBA) said that isn’t good enough.
“The report really reads to me like the city not wanting to enforce the absence of development permits and business licenses, and I just think that’s really disappointing,” said Puneeta McBryan.
The DBA’s stance isn’t that the city should get rid of all the parking lots, but that the owners should make them safer and more attractive, McBryan said.
“These parking lots have to be better. We cannot tolerate this level of disrepair, eyesores and frankly safety issues too — some of these lots are in conditions where you can break an ankle walking across with the potholes and the poor maintenance,” she said. “They’re just ugly.”
However, as bylaws stand, the lots are not required to be held to any standard other than what is laid out in the community standards bylaw.
The city said there is an oversupply of parking across the city and recent data demonstrated many surface parking lots are underused.
While there are many existing surface parking lots downtown, few new ones have been created in recent years due to new policies put in place that aim to move Edmonton towards a less car-oriented downtown.
Despite this, McBryan said Edmonton is still a car-reliant city.
“Parking is incredibly important to our downtown,” she said. “I think that’s part of the reason it’s going to be tough to get rid of a lot of these lots. This is revenue for those property owners and it’s a better business case for them right now than to build something better.”
The city interviewed two property owners with lots in the Quarters and they confirmed that they have found no demand for anything other than parking on their properties.
The owners said they have a vision for the neighbourhood and are waiting for the economy to improve and for more people to be in the area before developing something.
With the number of vacant lots and the typical timeline of development, McBryan said it will likely be five to 10 years before these lots are turned into something else.
“So what are we going to live with in the meantime? That’s our biggest question,” she said. “It cannot be the status quo.”
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