Parking garage plan won’t likely sway council: poll

An ambitious private proposal to buy the money-losing Pelissier Street parking garage — in order to keep retail outlets on the main floor and add public art and an upper-deck event space — seems unlikely to change councillors’ opinions on the issue, according to a Windsor Star poll.

A number of councillors appear committed to their November positions, when council voted 7-3 to spend $480,000 to replace the 14,000 square feet of underused retail space on the ground floor with about 40 more parking spaces. Coun. Bill Marra was absent from that meeting.

But Marra thinks the city should at least explore the idea of selling the parking garage, which lost $150,000 in 2013, $260,000 in 2014, $125,000 in 2015, and an estimated $60,000 in 2016.

“I’d be very open-minded to considering it,” Marra said Thursday. “If there’s an opportunity for the private sector to come in and perhaps do things a little bit differently, I don’t mind at least having the conversation about a partnership or an outright sale — especially if we retain parking downtown.

“But it has to be an RFP (request for proposals) process.”

Coun. Rino Bortolin also thinks the $2-million to $4-million proposal — by entrepreneur Mark Boscariol, property manager Mark Schincariol, and an unnamed local builder — is worth consideration.

“It would be a huge mistake to not consider it at all,” Bortolin said. “There’s due diligence that we would have to do. But we’re losing money on an entity that we can’t even keep up with repairs to make it a respectable asset.”

Coun. Chris Holt said: “To have willing, creative investors — who know the downtown well — approach the city to take a moneyloser off our hands, I’d say is a nobrainer to at least investigate with an RFP.”

The original discussion triggered debate in the community about whether removing the garage’s underused retail space — which has mould and water problems — would create a dead zone on Pelissier Street.

Council’s decision to remove retail space — originally made in a closed-door meeting, before being repeated at council — reversed an earlier agreement to seek tenants for the structure.

Mayor Drew Dilkens has already said he will not support the idea of selling the garage.

Hilary Payne, who voted to remove retail space in November, does not want to revisit the issue.

“The train has left the station some time ago,” Payne said. “The last thing I want to see is a council making decisions and then backing away from them. Once a decision is made it should hold, unless some new factors have come into account — which is not the case here.”

Coun. Ed Sleiman, who voted to remove retail space, said he’s leaning toward sticking to his decision. He worries that private operators could ratchet up rates.

“Can we stop the fees from going up?” asked Sleiman, who wonders if the city would have to build another garage in the future if parking demands increase. “At least if it’s under city control, we can do a lot of things to entice more people to come downtown.”