Every spring and summer, tens of thousands of people drive through Sundre on their way to enjoy a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities in the West Country.
But without adequate parking accommodations, many do not pull over to explore on foot what the town’s core has to offer, according to Jon Allan, Sundre’s economic development officer.
Making additional parking spaces available to entice drive-through motorists to stop in the hopes of getting more pedestrians through the doors of downtown businesses was discussed on May 27 during council’s meeting.
“Some of you may remember that way back in 2015, I initiated conversations with the owner of the Sundre Hotel and Restaurant regarding a potential partnership that would include the use of the gravel land currently used as a private parking lot behind their establishment,” said Allan.
The proposal included improving and beautifying that parking lot in combination with municipality-owned land immediately adjacent to the south of the private property, which is located south of Main Avenue and west of First Street South.
“The town owns about 35 per cent of the total proposed area,” he said.
“Recently, conversations with the hotel owner to create a trial partnership for this purpose resumed.”
There is an opportunity to entice motorists passing through on Main Avenue to “stop and shop in downtown Sundre,” he said.
Alberta Transportation's 2017 statistics indicated an average of nearly 26,000 vehicles per day travelling in all directions at the traffic lights. That translates to more than nine million vehicles per year at that intersection, he said.
“That number is actually 15 per cent above the 2016 count.”
Improved public parking options downtown could potentially tap into some of that traffic, in turn benefiting downtown businesses, he said.
Council could consider establishing a memorandum of understanding with the hotel’s owners to improve the land for public parking, he said.
“The town could explore costs to improve and manage these lands,” he said, including developing a practical parking lot design, providing and installing curb stops to define parking lot stalls as well as offering in-house lot grading and landscaping to beautify the lot.
Through the memorandum of understanding, the hotel’s owners would agree to commit lands for the project, which the municipality would manage and be responsible for undertaking the necessary improvements at a nominal cost, he said.
So administration was seeking support from council on this initiative to investigate options for the proposed three-year trial public parking lot in partnership with the Sundre Hotel and Restaurant and to bring back associated costs for further discussion, he said.
Administration asked for council's support to investigate options for a proposed three-year trial public parking lot in partnership with the Sundre Hotel and Restaurant and to bring back associated costs for further discussion.
“I believe that this is one step to helping try to improve the downtown atmosphere,” he said, adding administration recently received approval to apply for way-finding signage along the Alberta Transportation Highway 27 corridor.
“Those way-finding signs would be able to direct people to that parking lot as a free public and RV parking lot, which we hope will help people want to go there and walk around.”
Coun. Charlene Preston moved the recommended action, opening the floor to discussion.
Coun. Richard Warnock sought confirmation that no other design options had been ruled out.
“Correct,” said Allan, adding the design option included in council’s agenda is a concept.
Since the town only owns one-third of the proposed parking lot’s land, the plan is to pursue a trial partnership to see how well it could work before rushing ahead with, for example, laying any asphalt.
“It would continue to be used as a gravel parking lot,” he said, adding plenty of legwork remains, including working with a landscape architect and developing a primary access to facilitate flow-through for RVs.
“There will be multiple design options.”
Coun. Todd Dalke wanted to know whether the site could start being used before the final designs are presented.
“When will we be able to at least open it up, get rid of those (concrete) blocks so you guys can start using it as a parking lot today for the tourists that are coming through now instead of waiting for this to come back before council,” said Dalke.
Chief administrative officer Linda Nelson said before taking such action, the memorandum of understanding would have to be agreed to at least in principle.
In terms of timeline, Allan said his goal is to bring design options back before council by the next meeting. Assuming the memorandum of understanding is approved soon, he added the lot could be ready by the end of July.
“This is me being ambitious,” he said.
Nelson said once the agreement is in place, even without a final design, the municipality could start allowing the public to use the parking lot.
Operations manager Jim Hall said removing the concrete blocks could be done fairly quickly.
Coun. Cheri Funke said the proposal is a good idea, but expressed a concern that an increased flow of traffic could be problematic since Centre Street “is kind of falling apart. Do we have a plan to fix that?”
There is a project included in the capital budget to within the next four years redo Centre Street roughly from the Greenwood Campground to the south up to the Bearberry bridge to the north, said Allan.
Warnock, speaking in favour of the motion, said he’s only been back in Sundre for a few years, but hears on a nearly daily basis complaints regarding a lack of parking.
“I’ve heard a lot more about parking than I have about potholes,” he said.
“It’s time we got a parking lot in Sundre so people can walk to the restaurants or walk to the river…so let’s get this going.”
Council carried Preston's motion.
