Glebe wants new city parking garage, city’s planners say
City public-works department says four-storey structure isn’t needed
By David Reevely, OTTAWA CITIZEN January 7, 2014 6:00 PM
OTTAWA — People in the Glebe support a new multi-storey parking garage the city wants to build on a surface lot it owns behind a grocery store, the city’s planning department says.
City council’s planning committee is due to vote on a rezoning the project needs at a meeting next Tuesday.
“Comments indicated that the proposal is an efficient use of space and will help bring activity to the local economy,” reads the report to the planning committee.
The four-level garage “addresses a need for short-term public parking for the Glebe business area,” the report says. The city’s own public-works department, which is in charge of parking, said last year there is actually no real shortage of it in the district, though there might eventually be depending how the area changes over time and how much car traffic spills over from nearby Lansdowne Park.
Council’s transportation committee voted to build it. The rezoning by the planning committee is the next stage of approval.
According to the report, one resident objected that building a four-storey garage is 1980s-style thinking in a city that is ostensibly discouraging private car use as much as it can (by deliberately eliminating a lot of parking at Lansdowne, for instance) and that if the Glebe needs more parking, property developers should put it underground.
“All modes of transportation must be provided that allow for the wider community to access parts of the city if alternate modes are not available to them,” the planners respond. “It is not realistic to think that people do not use their cars. Having a parking garage is a better use of land than multiple surface parking lots.”
The concrete structure, to be built between Second and Third avenues west of Bank Street, is to have trees planted around it and include “an art treatment” on the parts that face neighbours next door. It’s to have 175 spots for cars and 35 spots for bikes. Coun. David Chernushenko wants to call it a “mobility hub” that supports different kinds of transportation. The city’s planners always call it a parking garage.
dreevely@ottawacitizen.com
ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa
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