Windsor Star

City was wrong to reject sale of parking garage

- ANNE JARVIS ajarvis@postmedia.com Twitter.com/winstarjar­vis

The Pelissier Street parking garage is a moneylosin­g, never-ending source of controvers­y.

Now, three investors, including a successful local businessma­n and city champion, have an enterprisi­ng proposal to buy it and do something with it. You’d think we couldn’t unload it fast enough. Instead, we told the investors to scram. We’re acting like the concrete behemoth that shadows blossoming Pelissier Street is a precious artifact. I must be missing something. Blink and you missed city council’s brusque dismissal of the proposal on Monday. Coun. Chris Holt asked for a report on issuing a request for proposals to sell the garage. It was defeated by the usual 6-4 vote.

We want investment, especially in our downand-out downtown. But we won’t even consider this investment. Why?

Investor Mark Boscariol owns two wellregard­ed restaurant­s, including The Willistead, where David Letterman ate last summer, in revitalize­d Walkervill­e. He also owns SnackbarB-Q. He took a risk opening it on Chatham Street, a bleak stretch of the core.

Boscariol is also a city booster. He offered Hackforge, a non-profit tech space, a deal to move downtown. He helped bring the busker festival back to Windsor. He hosts Walkervill­e’s night market.

Boscariol and the others are interested in making a $2-million to $4-million bid for the Pelissier Street parking garage. They would invest $750,000 to clean up the mould, waterproof it, bring in public art and convert the top deck into a place for special events in the summer. He says he has tenants to fill the mostly vacant commercial space on the ground floor.

It’s an ambitious plan to make the garage something more than ugly concrete and metal.

The city would profit from the sale and tax revenue. (The city says it receives taxes from the garage but they come from the city’s revenue from the garage.) It would no longer lose tens of thousands of dollars a year on it. It would save the almost half a million dollars it plans to spend ripping out the commercial space and replacing it with more parking spaces — something modern cities don’t do because it kills a street’s atmosphere. The city wouldn’t have to clean up the mould or waterproof, either.

But it’s not interested. What happened to defending taxpayers?

No one is suggesting the city not do its due diligence.

But Mayor Drew Dilkens says council has already made its decision. The garage is not for sale, he says. “Why do we have to sell the garage to do great things to it?” he asked on Facebook.

The city has owned the garage since 2003. We’re waiting.

He compared the garage to another city asset — historic and stately Willistead Manor. That’s just bizarre.

Baltimore is selling four city-owned, downtown parking garages. They don’t earn much revenue after expenses. They’re old, like the one on Pelissier Street, so they require maintenanc­e. And, like Windsor, there are private parking lots.

Baltimore has more important priorities. It will spend the $40 million to $60 million from the sale of the garages on community centres, parks and pools.

Dilkens also says Boscariol doesn’t have experience operating a garage. Is he deciding which developers are qualified to do which projects? Is the city’s record in all manner of developmen­ts really so great?

Coun. Ed Sleiman worried that a private owner might raise the price for parking. Seriously? That’s the least of the city’s concerns when swaths of downtown are vacant and blighted. The city already raised the price, anyway, but who cares? Half the spaces are taken by city employees who pay less than half the rate.

Finally, Dilkens dismissed Boscariol’s proposal as a “game,” just politics before the municipal election next year. But the games began long before this, in most of the 6-4 votes. It doesn’t matter what issue Holt raises. The same six councillor­s will probably oppose it. The divide on council skews debate and votes, preventing open and fair considerat­ion of issues.

It’s too bad for Windsor. No one wins.

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