North Battleford city council at this week's meeting. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Downtown parking

City to provide more daily-leased stalls to meet business needs

Oct 25, 2023 | 4:00 PM

North Battleford city council has agreed to change 18 parking stalls downtown to daily-lease use, instead of two-hour parking, to meet the needs.

The issue came up at this week’s council meeting.

Council heard the city received some complaints from area businesses concerned there weren’t enough parking stalls assigned for all-day parking to accommodate them.

Based on feedback from local businesses, city administration noted there is a current shortage of leased stalls for all-day parking, City Director of Engineering, Planning, Asset Management and Infrastructure, James Johansen, said in his report.

After assessing the situation the city identified some stalls that could work for all-day parking use instead.

FSIN

Chief Bobby Cameron re-elected for fourth term as FSIN Chief

Oct 31, 2024

Battleford Municipal Election

Laing seeks fourth term on Battleford Council

Oct 31, 2024

Softball Sask Hall of Fame

'I just wanted to give back': Local softball legend gets rewarded for her years of dedication

Oct 31, 2024

Johansen noted the city has a lease agreement in place with Magic Lantern for 200 spots for “non-exclusive” use, within one block of the site. Since most of the theatre’s business is in the evenings, the city believes it should still be able to meet the cinema’s needs for open stalls during prime business time.

“We can talk to the Magic Lantern theatre about this. We don’t see this causing [an issue], but if this does cause a problem for them, then we can do some adjustments,” he said.

Johansen added the change would be for the interim time, until a full parking report is completed by the city internally, assessing all the parking needs. There could be some additional changes potentially after that.

“We found this place in particular. If we find more places, we’ll bring it forward, to see if we can adjust some stalls to provide maybe a better balanced parking situation for downtown,” he said.

After discussing the issue, council agreed to approve city administration’s recommendation to change 18 stalls in Lot D, stalls 48 through 65, from general (two-hour) free parking to all-day leased stalls, applicable for typical business hours (Monday-Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) The city will also install signage to reflect the change, and to ensure proper parking bylaw enforcement is in place for these newly-assigned leased-parking spots. Outside these hours the spots would be available for open parking use.

Lot D proposed leased stalls #48 to #65. (supplied/City of North Battleford)

New signage will cost the city about $2,700 for the 18 stalls, but the city is expected to make about $7,200 per year in revenue from these newly day-leased spots.

Mayor David Gillan summed it up saying the city is taking an interim measure to deal with the matter.

“As we study this issue of downtown parking more and more, it’s not the first time we’ve talked about downtown parking,” he said. “The debate has been in and out of council for many years now. We’re just trying to fully understand the need for day-long parking.”

The mayor added the city wants to support its business community’s needs. The city also has to be sure it’s supplying the right mix of parking – two hours for visitor parking and all-day parking for people who work downtown.

“I think we are generally pleased we are able to identify some stalls right now, because we do have a number of people and businesses that have asked for some day parking, and we want to make that available in the short term,” Gillan said.

–

Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow