Saturday Special: Lots and lots of lots

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Some of downtown Winnipeg's estimated 154 lots.

They're creepy, weedy, windy wastelands that contribute to the sense of permanent decay downtown.

They were a major issue in this fall's civic election and now the city's plethora of surface parking lots are the subject of some messy internal politics at city hall.

According to a Free Press analysis, downtown Winnipeg has at least 154 lots with a combined value of well over $78 million -- a lowball estimate, but a starting point. Those lots cover more than 22 hectares, about the size of 38 Canadian football fields.

That's enough parking for almost 20,000 vehicles, a tidbit to remember next time you complain you can't find a spot.

In North American cities from Milwaukee to Denver, surface lots are both a vital service and an urban planning plague, a cause and a symptom of struggling downtowns.

In the words of the Downtown BIZ's Stefano Grande, surface lots are "asphalt deserts that create pedestrian dead zones" and those dead zones in turn make real development less feasible.

The lots provide needed parking for a bargain-basement price, especially during the day when thousands of workers converge on the downtown. But they represent the lowest and worst use of a parcel of land short of letting it go to seed.

"Surface parking lots represent a visual liability on downtown's landscape and are not the highest and best use of the land they occupy," wrote a team of North American parking experts who studied Winnipeg's situation in January. "They represent an enormous economic development opportunity."

The lots also contribute to the real and perceived danger of crime downtown. Surface lots tend to lack decent lighting, there's often only one or two ways out short of hopping a wooden fence, and many are so vast petty or violent crimes wouldn't be spotted by passing motorists.

Some of Winnipeg's 154-odd parking lots are tiny parcels -- small lots for a couple of dozen cars nestled between apartment buildings. Others, like the cityplace lot on Donald Street at St. Mary Avenue, take up nearly an entire city block.

In fact, Donald south of St. Mary is home to an almost unbroken stretch of surface parking lots. There are at least eight lots in a three-block stretch, making it one most desolate streets in the downtown.

Main Street is the same, with almost a dozen lots. Most irksome for city experts like Jino Distasio, director of the University of Winnipeg's Institute of Urban Studies, are lots like the one just north of the Canwest Place at Portage & Main.

"That's our prime corner. It's a signal that something's not right," he said.

The worst cluster of surface parking appears to be around Canwest Park, which is hemmed in on almost every side by a confusing mess of more than a dozen different lots, some owned by the city, some owned by Lombard Place and the Richardson family and some owned by the Canadian National Railway.

One of those parking lots, a huge one at the corner of Waterfront Drive and William Stephenson Way, was the source of a lengthy dispute over rent between the city and Riverside Park Management, a non-profit organization that sublets city land to the Winnipeg Goldeyes, owned by Mayor Sam Katz. Council effectively forgave $233,000 in unpaid rent stemming from a controversial 2006 city reassessment, raising questions about city hall's ethical oversight and conflict of interest rules.

That lot is now the most valuable surface lot in the downtown, with an official assessed value of $5.7 million. Last year, a developer floated the idea of paying the city even more, $7.7 million, to build a luxury hotel on the parcel as part of a long-sought water-park deal, but the idea fizzled.

How did the downtown become so pockmarked with surface lots?

Local planners say the late 1960s and '70s saw a significant shift of residents and capital out of the downtown and into the suburbs -- a phenomenon common in many North American cities but particularly acute in Winnipeg.

As building after building was abandoned, many of them historic and expensive to redevelop, owners demolished instead of renovating. Surface parking lots took their place, seen as a temporary way to make cash to cover maintenance and property taxes while the market improved enough to make building a condo tower or office building worthwhile. Problem is, thanks to a slow growth economy that still hasn't quite happened.

Even the old Winnipeg Tribune building was torn down after the newspaper closed in 1980. Thirty years later, the parcel remains a giant surface parking lot across from the Canada Post building. It's still smarter to sit on vacant land and earn a respectable income from parking instead of taking a risk on a housing or commercial development, especially since there are still condos for sale and storefronts for rent along Waterfront Drive, the downtown's marquee public-private housing development.

Zoning rules required a certain number of parking spots for each development, which also played a role in the proliferation of surface lots. Those rules were relaxed several years ago with the new downtown bylaw, and the city has effectively halted the practice of tearing down buildings to make way for parking.

But recently, a ramshackle new lot appeared on Portage Avenue just beside the Urban Bakery shop. Until recently, the lot was a small park with trees, benches and oversized jelly beans that were part of a public art initiative.

After raising a stink, the Downtown Biz says it managed to get the city to crack down on the lot's owners, who were using the parcel for parking in violation of zoning and design guidelines.

Parking is a necessary service in the downtown, especially for a city in love with cars that won't have a sophisticated rapid transit system any time soon.

But planners say it's time to determine how many lots provide needed convenience and how many are wasted properties.

In recent weeks, the future of downtown parking has been mired in internal city hall politics -- so much so that staff at the Parking Authority were reluctant to discuss surface lots.

Two months ago, Dave Hill, the high-profile COO of the Winnipeg Parking Authority, left the city to go work for a local consulting firm. At the time, the Parking Authority was in the midst of creating a downtown parking plan. A confidential draft summary of the plan, obtained by the Winnipeg Free Press, calls for five new parkades to be built in strategic locations downtown.

Two of those are already in the works. The city plans to partner with a private developer to build a $12.2-million mixed-use parkade on a surface lot on James Avenue in the East Exchange. And CentreVenture boss Ross McGowan says a similar project is in the works for somewhere north of Portage Avenue, not far from the MTS Centre and linked to a larger development.

Meanwhile, the owners of The Residence On York, the former Sheraton Hotel, are replacing the surface lot at the northwest corner of York Avenue and Donald Street with a 176-stall parkade.

All that represents notable progress. Building parkades, theoretically, reduces demand for surface lots and removes an annoying hurdle for developers worried about where condo-dwellers or office workers will park. Parkades aren't as good as residential or mixed-use development, but they're a start.

Other lots are unofficially earmarked as sites for future development. The large Impark lot on Main Street north of the Manitoba Museum is seen as a location for the museum's expansion one day. And the sprawling lot at York and Edmonton could be where the Winnipeg Convention Centre expands one day. The Forks, too, has plans over the next decade to turn its huge "railside" lot across from the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights into a multi-use project that includes a parkade, affordable housing and perhaps some shops.

But those are years in the future.

maryagnes.welch@freepress.mb.ca

Downtown Winnipeg's Surface Parking Lots
Publicly owned lots are indicated by red pointers; private lots are indicated by yellow pointers.

We’ve endeavoured to ensure the map pointers are roughly accurate, but they may not be precisely on a lot’s location due to limitations of Google's mapping technology. Please help us improve the database by alerting us to omissions or mistakes via email or the comment box below.  The text version of this database is also available online.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 4, 2010 A6