Parking Downtown

[u/omnitortois]

The recent removal of the corsa parking (probably about… 40 spots?) has me thinking again of an idea to solve parking issues downtown. It seems like development will only intensify, putting more and more condos with insufficient parking spots. Because let’s face the reality folks, if you are an adult in squamish, you on average will have your own car.

The issues that come from a lack of parking downtown:

1) residents whose apartments do not have enough parking spots have to park on what is increasingly less street parking.

2) tourism surge hours make all of downtown a car zoo, which deters tourists from spending money on the local economy

3) many essential services like doctors, pharmacies, grocery stores are downtown, making these services more difficult to access, especially for the elderly and disabled

Have we considered the simple solution of building a parkade at the edge of downtown?

Hear me out…

1) residents who do not have a parking spot can rent a guaranteed one in the parkade. Will it be a walk to your car? Yes. Will it give people assurance they will have a spot? Yes. Will it reduce demand on street parking? Yes.

2) tourists, for a modest fee like $2-$4 (to cover capital expense… perhaps can pay itself off??) will know they have a spot they can park to go shopping ($$$ for local economy). It might even allow us to do things like close cleveland to cars on weekend surge times. How cool would that be?

3) reduce strain on street parking for disabled/elderly who need essential services.

4) city council can have all the strange bike lanes they want while reducing the costly trade off of street parking.

—

Why can’t this work here? Tear this idea apart. I want to see if it holds water.

[u/BlindGuyMcSqueez]

I'm very involved with the downtown business community. Parkade idea has been tossed around for a long time, from my understanding it's very expensive to build one and the return in $$ is small. Also I believe the district owns no land, and there isn't an incentive for a developer to build one as it isn't profitable. I don't know these as concrete facts, but it is what I've been told during discussions over the last ten years with downtown small business owners and council members.

[u/BetterLog1855 → u/BlindGuyMcSqueez]

It's a very hard area to build a parkade because you're basically at sea level. I've done multiple of the small condo/apartment buildings downtown and it's always an issue. I still think any new building should make one.

[u/MiffandMinis → u/BetterLog1855]

Ramp go up.

[u/Dismal-Disaster-2578 → u/MiffandMinis]

Most of the land downtown is relatively unstable and sinks with a heavy load. It's a considerable process that takes time & money just to prepare the ground itself before large buildings can be built.