Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Arrogance of council,’ Feb. 15.
After reading this letter, I have to say that the writer is bang-on for what is happening in our town with the developments being pushed through.
At least the building at corner of St. Andrew Street East and Gowrie is providing at least one parking spot per unit, although still inadequate. The 350 St. Andrew Street residential building is providing 21 spots, for 36 residential units by manipulating the C1 zoning of the property. Is it only me that finds something dramatically wrong with this? Actually no, it’s the majority of business owners downtown and residents – but all that seems to have fallen on deaf ears at the council level.
We have a parking issue in Fergus; it has been brought up over and over again with nothing happening to solve the problem. So let’s just make it worse by approving buildings downtown that won’t have enough parking to support their residents – great idea. Lots of talk of a parking strategy, but zero action has been taken to improve the issue.
The minimum parking requirement for an apartment building is one per unit. The 350 St. Andrew St. building is residential regardless of how it is being pitched – 36 units, 36 minimum spots, not 21!
The developer suggests tenants won’t need cars. Really? That’s interesting. With the closest grocery store 1.3km away, are they walking back and forth to shop? All these tenants must have employment downtown as they won’t have cars to commute to work – not the case I’m willing to bet. Where do visitors park? Units that have multiple vehicles per unit, what happens there?
There is a three-hour parking limit on streets and municipal lots, with no overnight parking between Nov. 1 and March 31. So I again ask the developer, his planner and council to answer that question that has been asked of you many times with no intelligent responses.
When this building is full with tenants with vehicles that exceed the 21 spots, where are your tenants going to park with an extremely under-supplied amount of parking downtown ?
The burden is on the developer to provide adequate parking for his tenants, not the township and not businesses downtown.
Sean Mulligan,
Fergus