ELORA – Centre Wellington council approved cash-in-lieu of parking for two new apartment units above a commercial building in downtown Fergus.
The building at 120 St. Andrew Street West currently has a single apartment on the second floor, and the owners wish to add two more apartments above the commercial space.
Generally, the township bylaw requires one parking space for every living space.
However, managing director of planning and development Brett Salmon said because the new apartments are downtown the parking requirement is cut in half – so only one additional parking space is required.
Because the building takes up most of the land, “There is no reasonable way that the owner can provide parking on site,” Salmon said.
Exception agreement
Thus a parking exemption agreement was suggested, under which the property owner is required to pay $8,050 per parking space.
“If council accepts this agreement, upon payment of $8,050 then that property will be relieved from providing that one parking space and we can initiate the building permit for the apartment units,” Salmon said.
The township has provided the parking exemption agreement on a few other occasions.
For example, Salmon said, when the owners of the building where the Shepherd’s Pub is now located added a third storey and built six apartment units, they paid cash in lieu of parking.
Some of that money went to building six new parking spaces at the end of Geddes Street when it was reconstructed.
Councillor Ian MacRae asked where residents without dedicated parking are expected to park.
He suggested perhaps establishing “off-site” township-owned parking areas for which the municipality could issue parking permits “for residents to have this guaranteed parking area because one challenge we have is during the winter time people can’t park on the street because of snow removal operations so where do these cars go?” he said.
Salmon said that’s something that needs to be discussed.
CAO Andy Goldie said overnight parking is permitted in the parking lot next to the LCBO and the Victoria Street parking lot in Elora, even though there are no permits.
Three-hour limits
The same is true for municipal lots in Fergus by the library and the two municipal lots by the curling club.
Mayor Kelly Linton said parking for people who require it will be a focus once the three-hour parking limits downtown are established.
“We do know that that is something that we have to look into,” he said.
“We’re just trying to take a bit of a staged approach to making changes to parking.”
Linton added, “I think you’re right, councillor MacRae … we are encouraging … these kinds of rentals downtown, which we want to happen, we have to figure out for the property, with the property owners how we allow for people to park close by and not several kilometres away.”
