HIGH PRICE FOR PARKING
Council ignores final pleas
A construction price 57 per cent over budget and the pleas of residents and downtown merchants failed to dissuade the majority of councillors from trading retail space for ground-floor parking in the Pelissier Street parking garage.
In a 7-4 recorded vote that happened well after midnight Wednesday, they accepted the tender from the lowest bidder on the controversial project that Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association president Larry Horwitz said will “wreck the downtown.”
Stephen Golden, a 71-year-old who views the top parking deck of the garage from his nearby apartment, said the extra 43 spots the conversion will create are not needed. On Tuesday, all day long, 92 of the 95 to 97 spaces on the top deck were vacant, he said.
“Don’t do this, we don’t need the extra spaces,” Golden implored. “There’s a flow, there’s a beginning to bringing Pelissier Street back to what it once was.”
But Coun. Ed Sleiman said the stores are being ripped out (the tenants in the partly-leased space were recently evicted), not because the city needs more parking. “They’re being ripped out because we couldn’t rent them.” The city was losing money every year, he said. “We want to minimize the loss to the taxpayer.”
Mayor Drew Dilkens recited a sad list of failed attempts to make the commercial portion of the parking garage viable, starting way back in 1983 when developer Chuck Mady convinced the city to lease him the ground floor, which he converted to commercial in the 1979-era parking garage.
That concept was failing after 10 years, and continued to fail after the city took it over, Dilkens said, citing the numerous times the city wanted to convert the space back to parking but met resistance from the BIA.
The crowd chanted “Sell it, sell it,” when Sleiman talked about the losses suffered by the city as it tried to be a commercial landlord. City resident Al Teshuba, a longtime Conservative organizer, appealed to the conservatives sitting around the council table to embrace the conservative ideal of having the private sector take over.
“This will never end, there will always be an issue with this garage and it’s a waste of time,” he said.
Downtown resident and business owner Kate Isley said it’s “absolute insanity” to pay almost $300,000 more than budgeted for 43 parking spots. Originally estimated at $507,000, the bids from construction firms (when additional costs were factored in) ranged from $888,000 to more than $1 million. But city staff worked with the lowest bid to bring the cost down to $795,000.
Urban planner Jackie Lassaline said: “More parking isn’t needed, it’s the retail, it’s bringing the people back to the downtown.”
Resident Allison Mistakidis brought a petition signed by 35 downtown residents opposed to the project.
“I just don’t think it makes sense to take that parking garage and turn it into a dead zone,” she told council.
In the near future, cars will be self-driving, dropping people off downtown and then heading somewhere else, she said. “So they won’t need to park, it’s time to think ahead.”
The higher-than-anticipated bids, blamed on the hot construction industry, was jumped upon by opponents of the parking plan as one last chance to change council’s mind about the parking garage. The BIA organized a field trip to Detroit’s Z Garage to show how a funky garage with retail on the ground floor energizes the neighbourhood. But the same seven councillors who voted to convert the space to parking last year stayed resolute.
Voting to award the tender were: John Elliott, Sleiman, Fred Francis, Hilary Payne, Paul Borrelli, Jo-Anne Gignac and Dilkens. Voting against were Rino Bortolin, Bill Marra, Irek Kusmierczyk and Chris Holt.
In a followup motion, council unanimously approved asking the public for expressions of interest in the vacant commercial space on the ground floor of its Goyeau Street parking garage, which is 75 per cent vacant.
Bortolin, who represents the downtown, initially made a motion to “note and file” the tender for the Pelissier Street garage and direct staff to look into leasing out the space commercially again. But he was defeated.
“We’re about to spend threequarters of a million for 43 pretty parking spaces,” despite the fact the parking garage is never full, Bortolin said, citing statistics showing Windsor has more parking per capita than almost anywhere else in the country.
“All the numbers keep showing we just don’t need it,” Bortolin said. “This will do nothing but hurt the area.”