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Interesting article in today's Times..

Parking lot to find new purpose?

BY BRENT MAZEROLLE

TIMES & TRANSCRIPT STAFF
16 Feb 2012 08:34AM

A prime piece of downtown Moncton property that has spent the past decade as a parking lot might be about to be put to new use.

The City of Moncton and Rogers are approaching the end of a 10-year contract that sees the city provide 385 parking spots for the company at a cost of $1 per year, but the contract won’t expire because the first of three possible five-year extensions to the deal will take effect. (A fourth possible extension has been nullified because it required Rogers to undergo an expansion that didn’t happen by an agreed deadline).

However, with negotiations well under way for a new development on the land, that parking lot may be on the move before the next five years pass.

Yes, you did read that correctly. After all these years, the last parcel of the former Beaver Lumber lands bought by the city in 1998 is finally poised for a residential and commercial development. Maybe.

It will be 10 years on Saturday since Moncton council approved the parking deal, and it had its detractors from Day One in then-councillors Brian Hicks, George LeBlanc and Kathryn Barnes. At the latest council meeting, Hicks revisited his objections.

At issue over the years has been the relative merits of drawing Rogers and 700 jobs into downtown versus the potential lost revenue from either charging for the parking itself or from developing the land to a higher use.

Essentially, nothing has changed, except there is now more hope the site is about to finally have a building constructed upon it.

Asked for some accounting of the numbers involved in the “Beaver lands” saga, so named because the parcels the City of Moncton bought to promote and control downtown development back in 1998 were last owned by the Beaver Lumber company, city solicitor Stephen Trueman said the city was now getting about $1 million per year in property tax revenues from the development of Rogers and the new Moncton Law Courts on two of the three Beaver parcels.

Meanwhile, “we are in discussions about developing the third piece of the property, which will obviously create more revenue.”

As well, because Rogers is not using all of its allotted spaces and because the lot has more than 400 spaces, the city is currently renting another 140 spaces in the lot for $75 per month.

The developer is Ash-Verd, a partnership of companies Ashford Properties and Verdiroc, and it has known all along that it will be responsible for helping the city honour the parking lot contract though other means when they develop.

The leading idea that has been tossed around over the years is that any new development would have to include a parking structure to stack cars instead of taking up so much land mass, but Trueman said precise details were still being worked out.

It is worth remembering, though, that the sea of cars parked between Rogers and Assomption Boulevard most days is somewhat larger than what the city is contractually obliged to provide.

A development on the land would mark the completion of the municipality’s long foray into land development. Meanwhile, the move of the provincial jail to Shediac coming in March or April will mean another parcel of the downtown core could be up for grabs.

Trueman said, however, there’s no immediate plan in the works for the city to acquire the old jail property.

“The province’s internal process is to offer it to other provincial departments first,” Trueman said.