In a move Victoria residents should be getting used to, Victoria city council has moved forward two projects with plenty of housing but few places to park a car.
On Thursday, council gave three readings to bylaws for a 91-unit rental housing project at 1702 Quadra St. and 862 Fisgard St., with only four parking stalls instead of the required 60, and a 56-unit mixed-use project at 1055 Alston St. in Vic West that will have 17 parking stalls for residents and two for visitors, rather than a total of 55.
Adoption of the bylaws could happen as early as next week.
Mayor Marianne Alto said council is not concerned about having a lot of parking per unit.
“There have been a number of applications in the last year and a half which have had no parking, and then a number like the ones we did yesterday, which had significantly reduced parking,” she said Friday. “We’re constantly looking at what makes sense in the context and it isn’t an arbitrary thing.”
This year, council moved forward a 23-storey, 265-unit rental tower at 937 View St. with no residential parking spaces at all.
Last fall, when it gave the green light to the Starlight project— which promises 1,500 rental suites and about 100,000 square feet of commercial buildings on the 1000 and 900 blocks of Yates and View streets — council even directed Starlight to reduce the amount of parking. It wanted no more than 0.34 parking stalls per dwelling unit in the second and third phases, down from 0.52 stalls in the first phase.
Alto said in dense urban areas with good access to public transit, there is less need for private parking spaces
“Cities this size, which are hemmed in on three sides by water and or other municipalities, there’s certainly a limitation to how you densify. If we are going to be a core city, which we are, and we’re going to be looking at an extraordinary number of people coming here, which we are, and we’re trying to accommodate that as best we can, which we’re doing, then all of that leads to the fact that you have to make difficult choices,” she said.
The project at 1702 Quadra St. and 862 Fisgard St. will replace a 15-unit apartment called The Abbey with a 13-storey mixed-use building.
When it was approved last fall, councillors hoped saving the developer from digging down into bedrock three storeys for parking would translate into more affordable rent.
Laurie Lidstone, chair of the Victoria Real Estate Board, said there are two sides to the no-parking debate — on one hand, it may translate into lower prices due to lower development costs, but it could also make the units less attractive to buyers.
“Parking is still very desirable when you’re talking about condominium buyers,” she said.
Suites without parking sell for less, Lidstone said, noting the price difference can be as much as $50,000 in some areas of the city.
She said until more public transportation infrastructure — expanded transit, light rail or commuter rail and the like — is in place, Victoria will not be ready to be more car-free like Toronto. “I don’t feel like we’re even close,” she said. “If you can buy a place and you can live without parking, then it’s definitely more affordable. But it feels like we’re going to go through so many growing pains to get there.”
Lidstone applauds the city for approving more projects, however, since greater supply means more options for buyers and potentially lower prices.
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