$30-M reno for downtown parkade worth it: Lukes

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This article was published 04/01/2024 (708 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Upgrading the 50-year-old downtown Millennium Library parkade carries a hefty price tag: $30 million.

“If you can imagine 50 winters, 50 years of water, snow. We do our best to clean up after the mucky weather that we get when people bring it all in with their tires,” said Lisa Patterson, manager of operations and facilities, for the Winnipeg Parking Authority.

The authority has recommended about half of the cost be included in Winnipeg’s upcoming 2024-2027 budget for “high priority” work such as repairing concrete slabs and replacing lighting system controls.

The 480-stall parkade was built in 1974 and needs “behind the scenes” fixes that most users likely wouldn’t notice, Patterson said, but could result in the parking lot being closed down if work is delayed much longer.

The remainder of the repairs would be completed in the period from 2028 to 2030.

It’s expected the seven-year project would extend the life of the parkade by 25 years.

Patterson said net revenue generated by the parkade has returned to pre-pandemic levels, at just under $1 million in 2023.

She said the waiting list for monthly use has gone up, and spots often sell out when Jets games or concerts are held at the nearby arena.

“We’re still seeing the need to have a parkade in the downtown just because it’s so close to everything,” she said.

The public works committee will discuss the funding issue Tuesday.

Chairperson Coun. Janice Lukes supports spending millions to upgrade the facility; she calls it an investment in the effort to get people back downtown.

“Parkades generate a lot of money over many, many years, so I think it’s a wise investment to upgrade the parkade,” she said.

“There’s a huge demand, and even though people are working from home more, we have a big focus to get people downtown. There will always be a demand for it.”

In 2021, an assessment suggested it could cost $55 million to repair and to keep the parkade operational, and a second feasibility study pegged the cost at $30 million.

Lukes suggested the final price tag may increase by the time the project is completed.

“Depends when we start, because it only is a Class 3 estimate, and the work is expected to start in four years. I don’t know what the final costs will be,” she said.

The city’s cost-classification system lists Class 3 cost estimates as preliminary, within a 20 to 30 per cent accuracy range.

Functional Transit president Kyle Owens said the city should consider how many people benefit from a project before giving it the green light.

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“The question is, what kind of future are we investing in?” he said. “People will use what gets built, and if they see a brand new parkade and a broken-down bus stop, that’s not a difficult choice for most people.”

He said decisions about investing in public transit often take longer even though they involve less money, compared to the relatively quick assessment and recommendation from the public service to repair the parkade.

“If we’re going to spend this kind of money on cars, we should understand that it isn’t necessary, that this is a choice that the city is making to prioritize this spending this quickly.” he said.

“Think about how much transit infrastructure is subject to public consultation, feedback, community input. Those things are important. This spending being requested this year, how much community feedback, how much public consultation would parking be subjected to? Think about how different the city would be if it was.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.