Changes could be on the way for how much parking developers have to provide in the Harbour City.
Nanaimo city staff are steering the off-street parking bylaw in a new direction, looking at requirements for property owners in determining how many stalls must be provided and where.
The aim is to match up regulations with goals in the official community plan and transportation master plan, a staff report shows, and one of the changes could be a variable approach to parking rates.
Right now the city’s rules require the same amount of parking for multi-family residences, no matter where it is or how many bedrooms. Last year, of the 13 exceptions to the rule city hall granted, 77 per cent were for multi-family projects, and of six parking variances so far this year, 71 per cent are multi-family.
Dave Stewart, city environmental planner, said one-size-fits all doesn’t work anymore and he’s not sure it ever did. The city will look at determining parking supply based on the number of bedrooms in the units, proximity to transit and other factors.
Other potential changes are a 10-per cent reduction in parking at multi-family rentals and allowing property owners to create parking off site.
Builders and developers will feel the on-the-ground implementation of the bylaw, but it will affect everyone in some way, according to Stewart, who said parking affects urban form, so the more parking needed, the less building space there is and it results in less pedestrian-friendly buildings where large parking lots are created.
“For that reason absolutely it will affect the entire city,” he said. “It also affects the cost of housing, cost of development and that does trickle down to the average person at some point.”
Robin Kelley, vice-president and managing director of Groupe Denux, sees the review and changes as a good idea.
The incentive now is to build the same type of two-bedroom units rather than smaller, more affordable units because the same amount of parking has to be used, he said. The proposed changes would allow Groupe Denux to tailor the structure of buildings in terms of unit mix based on where it thinks the demand is, rather than try to play around with the parking bylaw and take better advantage of the land.
He also said the company has passed on sites in Nanaimo because the only way to make the numbers work would be to get parking variances and it’s political under the current system. By redoing the parking bylaw to ratios that make sense and are workable, it levels the playing field so it’s transparent for everyone, he said.
Architect Ian Niamath said he’d like more careful consideration of the parking requirement for any particular type of building in terms of where it is and its focus, rather than applying the broad brush of the parking bylaw because it’s not working. Many projects don’t get off the ground because of the amount of parking required and he said asking for a parking variance is generally a headache.
“We need housing for instance and as soon as you start looking at residential you have a huge application of 1.66 [parking] spaces per unit no matter what size the unit is. It does not make sense at all,” he said.
The benefit of making parking variable for multi-family is there will probably be better quality development, he said.
The public will have a chance to give feedback about the changes this fall.
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