City working to increase parking at South Okanagan Events Centre
Big changes are in the works to finally address concerns about parking at the South Okanagan Events Centre.
Finding spots to leave vehicles during most events — even minor hockey tournaments — has been made difficult due to construction of the Cascades Casino, which gobbled up about 100 spots when it opened last year.
It now leases 70 stalls from the city, but there’s nothing stopping its customers from parking elsewhere on the campus.
And the parking crunch would only get worse if the city goes ahead with construction of a proposed twin-rinks arena on the east side of the campus.
“I think shoehorning that (new arena) in there is insanity,” said Penticton man Claude Bergman, who has been sharing his concerns with city staff and the Herald.
“Why not go out to a green field site … and build the thing properly and forget spending all this money relocating streets and everything?”
The site was recommended by the arena task force because it would help attract major events and result in “operational efficiencies,” like the ability to share staff and equipment with the SOEC and OHS Training Centre rinks, according to city facilities manager Bregje Kozak.
Regardless of whether or not the new arena actually goes ahead, Kozak said, there are changes coming to the campus to ease motorists’ pain as a result of non-stop complaints from the likes of Bergman.
The first is the pending removal of the temporary visitors’ centre at the northwest corner of the site, which is expected to repatriate 70 stalls.
And the short road that was to have been the main access to the SOEC off Eckhardt Avenue — which was built, but never approved for use by the Transportation Ministry — is coming out to create more space.
The city is also in negotiations to purchase more properties in the area to use for parking. City manager Peter Weeber is leading the talks, but declined to provide any specifics because negotiations are ongoing. He expects to report out as early as the March 20 council meeting.
Besides those physical changes, the city will be looking for recommendations to make better use of existing space from a traffic analysis it will have completed as part of a feasibility study of the twin-rinks proposal.
“We know we have a lot of citizens who are concerned right now, so the initial phase (of the traffic analysis) will look at what we can do now,” said Kozak, alluding to measures such as new signage and additional staff to guide drivers.
She hopes to have many of the changes in place by the start of next hockey season.
And should the new twin-rinks facility — which will require the city to come up with about $24 million by this time next year — go ahead, Alberni Street is due to be pushed west with a new traffic circle added at the entrance to the SOEC to make more space on the campus.
None of the improvements were recommended by the team at Urban Systems that conducted a traffic study in 2015 and suggested parking would only be a problem six times a year during big concerts.
Kozak, who wasn’t with the city then, acknowledged the earlier study, meant to guide council’s decision on leasing land for the casino, missed the mark, in part because it relied on assumptions.
“The first study was probably based on the information we had at the time,” she said.
“So now that we have real information, we should be a lot more accurate.”