New parking rules mean no time to linger in the ByWard Market
The mayor says a proposed three-hour cap will increase turnover, yet the city’s modelling wants a revitalized space that has visitors stay longer.
By Bruce Deachman, Ottawa Citizen
Published Mar 03, 2026 | Last updated 21 hours ago
Early one morning last summer, I parked my car on the top level of the city-run garage at 70 Clarence St. and didn’t think about it again until the following day.
For the next 24 hours, I wandered the ByWard Market. I enjoyed an iced latte on the cobblestone patio outside Planet Coffee, and a sandwich on the sidewalk in front of La Bottega. I spoke with tourists, residents, shop owners, delivery-people, buskers, a homeless man and more. I picked up a book for myself and a cheap hand-crafted ring for a friend’s daughter. I watched the late-night revellers head home and be replaced by early-morning dog-walkers. I was there when the sun went down and when it came up again.
I lingered, meandered, lost track of time.
If I want to do that again this summer, I’ll need to move my car seven times.
When Mayor Mark Sutcliffe unveiled the ByWard Market Action Plan at a recent Ottawa Board of Trade event, he characterized it not as a reset, but rather a continuation of the ByWard Market Public Realm Plan (BMPRP) that council approved in 2021 — essentially the action part that follows the vision.
But the mayor also introduced details that weren’t in the original pedestrian-first blueprint.
Among them was setting a three-hour parking limit in the city-owned garage at 70 Clarence St., replacing the unlimited parking that enabled the kind of day — and night — I experienced last summer.
The rationale offered by the mayor is that the three-hour cap will increase turnover and make it easier to find a spot. But turnover and lingering are not the same things.
The city’s own modelling suggests that a revitalized ByWard Market should encourage visitors to stay longer — browsing, shopping, dining, socializing. Planners, in case you’re keeping a bingo card of examples of ridiculous government vernacular, call it “dwell time.”
Enforcing a three-hour limit may help to fill the city’s coffers, but it isn’t going to do much to encourage extended stays in the Market. It brings to mind an old Jack Ziegler cartoon in The New Yorker, depicting a restaurant called the “Eat ’n’ Pay ’n’ Get Out” — essentially efficiency dressed up as hospitality. But in my half-century of visiting and working in the Market, it hasn’t been efficiency that draws me back, but rather serendipity — the people you unexpectedly run into and the new things you find.
The three-hour parking, though, is only part of the story at 70 Clarence.
The garage itself is a ticking meter. According to city staff, it needs almost $2 million simply to safely stay open for the next two years, and nearly $30 million to maintain it for much beyond that — and the latter scenario would necessitate closing it for two years. The Action Plan report calls 2028 “a fixed and unavoidable decision point.”
So one way or another, something has to happen there.
The city’s preferred vision is to demolish the structure and replace it with a cultural “destination” building — potentially home to organizations like the Ottawa School of Art and the National Portrait Gallery — and, at least in Sutcliffe’s telling of it, underground parking.
This may surprise residents who supported — and councillors who endorsed — the Public Realm Plan, which prioritized pedestrians over vehicles and cautioned against adding new parking in the Market’s core. The current plan includes the possibility of 200 underground spaces there, about 100 fewer than the existing building can accommodate.
Supporters of the parking will argue that it is essential to keep merchants viable. Critics will say that it undercuts to goal to build a pedestrian-focused district.
Even the city’s own feasibility analysis suggests that underground parking would be a financial drag over the long term, to the tune of almost $70 million over 40 years. Meanwhile, no funding has been identified for the building’s construction, nor any tenants confirmed. The Action Plan asks city staff to look into tapping senior levels of government, sponsorships and philanthropic opportunities to offset potential taxpayer costs.
None of this is to suggest that the current garage should stay. It’s hardly the best use for one of the Market’s most (otherwise) attractive parcels of land. What goes there in its place matters.
And as council weighs its options for 70 Clarence, it needs to decide not only what to put there, but what it wants the Market to be: a place to eat ’n’ pay ’n’ get out, or somewhere where visitors want to stay a bit longer.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/new-parking-rules-byward-market
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