After concerns over parking requirements in Campbell Business Park North were first publicly aired at a meeting last week, more developers and business owners are coming forward to say the City of St. Albert’s formula doesn’t make any sense.
Developer Vlado Brcic built a five-bay, 10,000-square-foot facility at 320 Circle Dr., but wrangling with the city over the number of parking stalls on the property has been a major headache.
Brcic said he set aside four parking stalls per bay in the initial plans he submitted to the city for his building, making it clear he intended to develop mezzanine levels in each, and those were approved.
However, the city calculates the number of parking stalls needed based on square footage before development permits are issued. This means the first tenants would be allotted more spaces than the developer intended, and latecomers to the building may be denied permits because, in the view of development officers, there aren’t enough stalls left over.
“They leave it up to the very end. … They said, ‘You need this many stalls minimum.’ We said, ‘You know we’re putting in mezzanines, right?’ And they said, ‘We know,’” Brcic said. “The opportunity to put in a mezzanine can increase your capacity by 50, 60 per cent, 70 per cent in some cases. They knew all that up front. But when it comes down to the end, there’s a big problem.”
That’s just one of Brcic’s complaints, though. He said development officers first approved a wood frame structure for the condo complex, then told him later it had to be made out of steel and concrete. The redesign of the building cost him $250,000, six months and three or four clients to whom he had pre-sold bays.
In other cases, the business park zoning regulations were too restrictive to allow interested businesses to locate there.
“This was supposed to be originally a tech park, but they didn’t even have Shaw cable. One guy that we leased space to, we couldn’t get his Internet going,” Brcic said.
One of Brcic’s tenants, Garry Guenette of Garry’s Heating, is using the space in the facility strictly for storage, with only one staff member there throughout the day. Still, the square footage dictates that he needs eight parking stalls.
“I understand the city’s need to have the bylaws in place to prevent issues with parking; it’s all understandable. The problem is that it’s too black-and-white,” Guenette said. “There’s not any allowance for certain circumstances.”
He added that his construction pretty much came to a halt halfway through, and he’s now waiting to get his ducks in a row to re-apply for a development permit.
Guy Boston, the city’s general manager of planning and engineering, told the Gazette last week that his department can’t have any idea what sort of businesses will set up shop in condos built on spec, so they can’t do a whole lot about the parking issue.
“This is really something that needs to be managed by the condo association,” Boston said. “We try to work with the owner until the parking is assigned and then it is up to the owners.”
Coun. Cathy Heron also indicated to the Gazette last week that she would bring forward a motion to city council this December, once the 2012 budget process has wrapped up.
In the meantime, Guenette is working to secure offsite parking because, without it, it will be nearly impossible to sell the bay.
“If we don’t finally get our development approved — which we will be doing, because there are other options; we can go with offsite parking, which we are in the process of doing, and once we have that in place, I’m going back to the city and getting another development permit and going through the whole thing again, because sometime down the road, if I want to sell, the company that wants to buy it, the city’s going to go, ‘No, you can’t do anything in that building because it was never approved,’” he said.
