The key objection to developing the Ross Street parking lot site for mixed use development is the taking away of the only free two-hour parking lot in the heart of downtown.
The Ross Street parking lot is used by many downtown businesses for employee parking as it is the only free parking lot in the vicinity and Salmon Arm does not offer any free parking for employees, even though many other municipalities do.
The city should look at this as part of a comprehensive re-evaluation of the parking management for the downtown since while the Ross Street parking lot is free, it is only for two hours and the intention was never for this lot to be free all-day parking for business owners and their employees.
Salmon Arm is in the fortunate position of having an overabundance of parking downtown with a recent survey presented to the Downtown Parking Commission showing we are only at 58 per cent capacity; however, due to the misplacement of pay parking kiosks, downtown business owners and employees are parking in the two-hour free parking areas as the cost of using the pay parking is very high. This makes it difficult for customers to find convenient parking spots and has created a false sense of scarcity, when in actual fact hundreds of downtown parking spots sit empty.
The lack of free all-day parking for downtown employees is creating staffing issues for business owners and is an expensive and misguided approach to parking and land usage with very little upside.
Instead of providing free parking for employees, the city is focusing on enforcement with ticketing, and in 2023 nearly doubled parking fines from $35 to $50. This approach is not working for downtown business owners. What downtown businesses require to thrive is affordable, conveniently located, safe parking for their employees.
To start, the Salmar parking lot should be reverted to free parking year-round. This lot is largely unused during the day and if the Ross Street parking lot were to be developed, would make up for the loss of parking at the Ross Street lot basically on a one for one basis. Free parking should also be offered at the wharf parking lot during the off season, and the city should look at activating other locations for downtown employee parking as well. In addition, the city should purchase new parking technology which would allow tourists to be charged a higher rate than locals – another strategy Salmon Arm has not implemented that other municipalities have.
Our downtown businesses pay a levy to maintain the city parking lots and to build a future parkade. Yet the city is making it difficult to operate a business downtown by charging for parking on the periphery and on all the parking lots except Ross Street, as this is causing real parking issues in the core and massive competition between customers and staff for the remaining free parking spots, which are located in the most desirable locations.
