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Originally Posted by UptownJeff
Keep in mind it's in a heritage area and a modern glass tower wouldn't fit imo.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kwajo
Really? Don't the city's development regulations have minimum parking requirements in this zone, I could have sworn that was in PlanSJ. The renderings seem to show that they could be maintaining the parking entrance behind the Imperial that exists there now, perhaps expanding it to be a bit larger?
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I find it extremely difficult to imagine that IOL would build a new Home Office and not include some form of indoor, underground parking. Nearly every building over 10 storeys here in Ottawa has some, especially those being used by government/business. The City should push them on this if there isn't any included.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwajo
As a resident who uses street parking in the vicinity, the parking is a sticky situation. There are huge amounts of surface/structure parking within a 10 minute walk of this new building's site, but a lot of commuters have shown a tendancy to prefer to park on-street and play the two-hour parking space shuffle than walking a few extra minutes.
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Which they shouldn't be able to do, IMO.
Here in Ottawa it works very simply. To be able to park on the street in front of your home you have to buy a monthly (or tri-monthly) parking pass. This allows you to park for longer than just the posted two hours. Otherwise you can only park for a two hour max between 9 and 5. In Ottawa
you will get a parking ticket if you go over, or park in a no parking zone. This prevents people who work downtown but live in the suburbs from parking in front of my apartment, which is a 10 minute walk from downtown.
All Saint John needs is similar rules and actual enforcement and people will be scurrying to parking garages in no time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kwajo
If we're consolidating employees without on-site parking provisions, the city (or preferably Irving Oil) needs to heighten enforcement or increase incentives to get commuters to ride transit, bike or actually use parking lots and parking structures and leave street parking for residents and short-term visitors (such as shoppers).
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I'm always going to see biking as a form of transit as a no-go in Saint John. It's too large, spread-out, with too much change in elevation to make biking easy and consistent. It's not worth it. Unless you're living and working on the Peninsula I think it's a bit too difficult to manage.
My suggestion above would encourage employees Uptown from utilizing residential parking and would move them towards the parking garages. The last thing I think we should be doing is building another parking garage for a new building when we already have three in the area, one of which underutilized. The City should stand its ground on this.
As for transit i'm not sure what could be done outside of the current formula. King's Square is already a major station for most buses and Comex already runs between the City and suburbs. I would like to see the city put more funding into transit to allow for more consistent schedules and reliability, however.